From: Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com>
To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Proliferation of options is great simplification of pipes, really?
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2021 22:34:10 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <6621ba33-1a45-b074-a3ef-26671360d949@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210222033217.dkqavclp22sa77ln@localhost.localdomain>
On 2/21/21 9:32 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2021-02-21T20:34:55-0600, Will Senn wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> So, we've been talking low-level design for a while. I thought I would
>> ask a fundamental question. In days of old, we built small
>> single-purpose utilities and used pipes to pipeline the data and
>> transformations. Even back in the day, it seemed that there was
>> tension to add yet another option to every utility. Today, as I was
>> marveling at groff's abilities with regard to printing my man pages
>> directly to my printer in 2021, I read the groff(1) page:
>>
>> example here: https://linux.die.net/man/1/groff
> A more up to date copy is available at the Linux man-pages site.
>
> https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/groff.1.html
I just picked the first hit in google :) shoulda known better. However,
it's the same text that's in my mac's install (Mojave).
>
>> What struck me (the wrong way) was the second paragraph of the
>> description:
>>
>> The groff program allows to control the whole groff system by command
>> line options. This is a great simplification in comparison to the
>> classical case (which uses pipes only).
> What strikes _me_ about the above is the awful Denglish in it. I fixed
> this back in 2017 and the correction shipped as part of groff 1.22.4 in
> December 2018.
Mac Mojave: Groff Version 1.19.2 3 July
2005 GROFF(1)
>> Here is the current plethora of options:
>> groff [-abcegilpstzCEGNRSUVXZ] [-d cs] [-f fam] [-F dir] [-I dir] [-L arg]
>> [-m name] [-M dir] [-n num] [-o list] [-P arg] [-r cn] [-T dev] [-w name]
>> [-W name] [file ...]
>>
>> Now, I appreciate groff, don't get me wrong, but my sensibilities were
>> offended by the idea that a kazillion options was in any way simpler
>> than pipelining single-purpose utilities. What say you? Is this the
>> perfected logical extension of the unix pioneers' work, or have we
>> gone horribly off the trail.
> I'd say it's neither, and reflects (1) the limitations of the Unix
> filter model, or at least the linear topology of Unix pipelines[1]; and
> (2) an arbitrary set of rules determined by convention and common
> practice with respect to sequencing.
snip...
Very informative post, Branden. I appreciate the details. I gotta read
more code :).
Will
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-02-22 4:35 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-02-22 2:34 Will Senn
2021-02-22 3:32 ` G. Branden Robinson
2021-02-22 4:32 ` Dan Stromberg
2021-02-22 4:34 ` Will Senn [this message]
2021-02-22 5:45 ` G. Branden Robinson
2021-02-22 15:49 ` John P. Linderman
2021-02-22 15:57 ` William Cheswick
2021-02-22 16:03 ` John P. Linderman
2021-02-22 21:16 ` G. Branden Robinson
2021-02-22 16:02 ` Warner Losh
2021-02-22 16:12 ` Robert Clausecker
2021-02-22 17:15 ` John Cowan
2021-02-23 0:24 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-02-22 21:14 ` G. Branden Robinson
2021-02-22 7:20 ` Rich Morin
2021-02-22 18:27 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-02-22 19:30 ` Richard Salz
2021-02-23 2:47 M Douglas McIlroy
2021-02-23 10:42 ` Jaap Akkerhuis
2021-02-23 13:23 ` Brantley Coile
2021-02-23 13:49 ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-02-23 15:04 Steve Simon
2021-02-24 2:42 ` M Douglas McIlroy
2021-02-24 19:38 Norman Wilson
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