From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 03185a08 for ; Fri, 16 Nov 2018 06:39:20 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id DF9E5A26DB; Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:39:19 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C1226A26D4; Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:38:59 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 9351EA26D7; Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:38:57 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 524A5A26D5 for ; Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:38:57 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id BDC9035E133; Thu, 15 Nov 2018 22:38:56 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2018 22:38:56 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Rob Pike Message-ID: <20181116063856.GL3341@mcvoy.com> References: <201811160143.wAG1hqbV019990@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] man-page style X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org, Doug McIlroy Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" Sorry to hijack this but I gotta. Because I love nroff/troff. So I was talking to a tech guy at one of the wall street banks, Marc Donner. I told him about a thing I had done, I called it webroff, it was a perl script that took roff -ms input and produced a website, complete with a table of contents, a site map, view a section as a page, view the whole thing as page, it was pretty cool. Sort of old school in web styling but super useful. For a long time BitMover's website was a webroff site. We eventually moved on to a node.js pile of crap and even the biggest webroff haters at my company admitted that was a mistake. I was talking to Marc about it and saying how low level it was. Marc had some insight, he said that roff -ms mostly said what you wanted to do, not how to do it. That's why I could build the perl script, it was the macros that made it work. Roff macros are a lot like device drivers, we have this read/write/etc view of the world and a shit ton of work gets done to make that world view be simple but it isn't. And to go to my love of roff, back in 1998 I was program chair for a Linux Expo confernce. Which just meant I formatted the proceedings. LaTex was all the rage but I encouraged roff. The one guy that took me up on it was "holy crap is this easier than LaTex, I love groff". Like Git, the wrong answer won, I do think that you all should look at groff, it's pretty cool, LaTex won but groff is still a thing that has taken roff forward. On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 02:18:35PM +1100, Rob Pike wrote: > As someone whose r??sum??, the one that got me in the door at Bell Labs, was > formatted with nroff -man, I of course support the clarity and precision > Doug celebrates. I wish the rest of the world agreed, but it doesn't. > Although I hold the editor line for much of the documentation for Go, for > instance, I fend off frequent requests to rewrite and expand. Flab is felt > to be friendlier, much as I (and Doug, who taught me more about writing > than anyone else) would prefer the leaner cuts. > > -rob -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm