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From: Rich Morin <rdm@cfcl.com>
To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 03:22:25 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <B93B7D49-64CA-4A2A-AE56-E92BD7D6B5BD@cfcl.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m1j3xUB-0036tPC@more.local>

Ahem.  Back in the 80's, I used both nroff and troff a fair amount.
For example, Vicki Brown and I used nroff, in combination with an
IBM I/O Selectric (Datel 30) to print most of her master's thesis.
I also used troff to typeset several books for Prime Time Freeware.
Mostly, I used pre-existing macro packages, but sometimes I had to
dive down to the bare metal.  It all worked, and was quite flexible,
but I really don't miss it for adding docs to software projects.

Lately, I've been using the built-in documentation tools for Elixir,
a functional programming language based on the Erlang VM and a lot
of Ruby syntax.  I'm pleased to say that it's really quite pleasant.

I create multi-line "attributes" using macros such as @doc.  These
are encoded using Markdown, which isn't perfect but seems adequate.
The results are converted into both HTML pages and interactive help
text, with automagical indexing.

I'm able to create "doctests" by embedding IEx (Interactive Elixir)
examples, eg:

    iex> 2 + 2
    4

These get tested automagically, providing a modicum of reliability
to the documentation.  Amusingly, I did something similar years ago,
extracting C code from the SYNOPSIS sections of Apple's man pages.
This let me find and report a few docubugs...

-r


  parent reply	other threads:[~2020-02-18 11:23 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 83+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-02-17 15:20 Doug McIlroy
2020-02-17 16:47 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-17 18:09 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 18:39   ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-17 21:16     ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 22:50     ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 23:22       ` Warner Losh
2020-02-18  0:56         ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-18  3:33         ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18  7:27           ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-18  0:03       ` Richard Salz
2020-02-18  0:17         ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-18  0:54           ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-18  1:05           ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-18  7:40           ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-18  7:45             ` arnold
2020-02-18 20:24               ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-18 11:22             ` Rich Morin [this message]
2020-02-18 12:28               ` arnold
2020-02-18 12:49                 ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2020-02-18 13:23                   ` arnold
2020-02-18 15:11             ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 15:28               ` arnold
2020-02-18 15:36                 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-18 15:43                 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-18 15:52                   ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 16:40                   ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-02-18 18:39                     ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-18 21:26                       ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18 21:29                       ` Wesley Parish
2020-02-19  4:52                       ` [TUHS] Open source or free software? (was: man Macro Package and pdfmark) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-02-18 15:48                 ` [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark Clem Cole
2020-02-18 16:02                   ` Chet Ramey
2020-02-18 16:28                     ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 17:49                   ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-18 21:46                 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-18 16:47               ` Henry Bent
2020-02-18 20:22               ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-19  4:44                 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-19 18:01                   ` Earl Baugh
2020-02-19 18:12                     ` Emile Bye
2020-02-19 20:18                       ` Michael Huff
2020-02-19 20:34                         ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-19 21:09                         ` Henry Bent
2020-02-20  7:27                         ` arnold
2020-02-20  7:43                           ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 13:15                             ` Dan Cross
2020-02-20 16:23                           ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-20 16:34                             ` Arthur Krewat
2020-02-20 17:06                             ` Al Kossow
2020-02-20 17:24                             ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-20 17:48                               ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 20:10                                 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-20 20:18                                   ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 16:48                           ` Nemo
2020-02-20 17:00                             ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-20 19:16                           ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-20 23:45                         ` Doug McIntyre
2020-02-21  0:18                           ` Warner Losh
2020-02-21  1:14                             ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-02-21  8:19                             ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-21  8:17                           ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-21 10:17                             ` arnold
2020-02-21 10:37 ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-21 18:34   ` Heinz Lycklama
2020-02-21 18:59     ` Warner Losh
2020-02-21 21:10       ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-21 21:46         ` David Barto
2020-02-22  6:48     ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 10:42     ` Al Kossow
2020-02-22 11:01       ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 16:38         ` Warner Losh
2020-02-22 18:11           ` arnold
2020-02-22 23:41             ` [TUHS] Mini-UNIX Warren Toomey
2020-02-22 11:08       ` [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 16:40         ` Warner Losh
2020-02-22 16:46         ` Clem Cole
2020-02-22 17:51           ` Heinz Lycklama
2020-02-17 18:55 Noel Chiappa
2020-02-17 20:13 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-17 21:06   ` CHARLES KESTER
2020-02-18  0:36 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18 13:13 Don Hopkins

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