Update: mandoc-cgi

[Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>]

Hi,

This is the last note about mandoc-cgi to this list: if you have 
comments about it, please let me know as soon as possible!  I'll be 
putting it aside except for little tweaks before BSDCan.  But I'll be 
happy to hack in any neat suggestions.

So if you haven't heard, mandoc-cgi pushes the "MDOC IS SEMANTIC!" line 
by actually mining for data in manuals.  To the best of my knowledge, 
it's the only utility that takes advantage of semantic UNIX manual 
content.  ("Apropos" doesn't count.)

For example...

Which manuals reference the POSIX real-time extension?

  http://mdocml.bsd.lv/cgi-bin/mandoc.cgi?key=1003.1b

Which manuals list deraadt@ as an author?

  http://mdocml.bsd.lv/cgi-bin/mandoc.cgi?key=de+raadt

Which manuals list "stdlib.h" as an includes, sorted by title?

  http://mdocml.bsd.lv/cgi-bin/mandoc.cgi?key=stdlib.h&sort=mtitle

Where can you find the "opterr" variable documented?

  http://mdocml.bsd.lv/cgi-bin/mandoc.cgi?key=opterr

Anyway, the CGI is generic (uses templating for its output) and thus has 
its own project page.  See

  http://mdocml.bsd.lv/mandoc-cgi/index.html

for a list of its goodies.  For example, you can search using UTF-8 
strings, sort output by relevance/title/etc., use a text-based browser 
(this was very important), and so on.

I've focussed on the CGI aspect, but of course, this can easily be 
changed around to be a CLI application, a GNOME-browser plugin for 
manuals, or whatever.  I'm remarkably unimaginative in this regard, so 
speak up (with code, preferrably) if you've suggestions.

I do, however, foresee mandoc-db mining for more and more data, which of 
course would be searchable via mandoc-cgi.

Thanks,

Kristaps

P.S., note that mandoc-cgi uses the CVS version of mandoc for its stuff, 
so if you want to play with it on your own and you don't have CVS 
access, let me know.
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