Path: csiph.com!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!usenet.stanford.edu!not-for-mail From: Ingo Schwarze Newsgroups: gnu.groff.bug Subject: [bug #58653] Please add back in the mdoc(7) manual Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 18:51:41 -0400 (EDT) Lines: 44 Approved: bug-groff@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <20200624-221331.sv200595.64640@savannah.gnu.org> <20200624-225141.sv97361.96482@savannah.gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lists.gnu.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8 X-Trace: usenet.stanford.edu 1593039103 14052 209.51.188.17 (24 Jun 2020 22:51:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: action@cs.stanford.edu To: Ingo Schwarze , , bug-groff@gnu.org Envelope-to: bug-groff@gnu.org X-PHP-Originating-Script: 1001:sendmail.php X-Savane-Server: savannah.gnu.org:443 [209.51.188.72] X-Savane-Project: groff X-Savane-Tracker: bugs X-Savane-Item-ID: 58653 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; OpenBSD amd64; rv:77.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/77.0 X-Apparently-From: 87.173.117.25 (Savane authenticated user schwarze) In-Reply-To: <20200624-221331.sv200595.64640@savannah.gnu.org> X-BeenThere: bug-groff@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Bug reports for the GNU version of nroff, troff et al" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-Mailman-Original-Message-ID: <20200624-225141.sv97361.96482@savannah.gnu.org> X-Mailman-Original-References: <20200624-221331.sv200595.64640@savannah.gnu.org> Xref: csiph.com gnu.groff.bug:1882 Update of bug #58653 (project groff): Severity: 3 - Normal => 1 - Wish Assigned to: None => schwarze _______________________________________________________ Follow-up Comment #1: I *VERY* strongly oppose this idea. Documentation ought to be correct, complete, concise, and easy to find, which implies all in one place. This particular, totally unmaintained manual page was full of errors, blatantly incomplete, terse to the point of incomprehensibility, yet not concise, but putting excessive weight on aspects of marginal importance. Besides, it caused a needless split of documentation that can, without any downside, be in one place, causing people to miss the real documentation. I'm not going to waste my time enumerating all the many deficiencies of this ancient, unmaintained document. No, importing it would not be "better than nothing", it would be a huge step backwards. It is even a terrible starting point for working on something better. In general, it is an extremely bad idea to have a short and a long version of the same manual page. All that does is making it likely that both get out of sync and eventually neither are correct. One reference manual is enough. If groff developers think groff_mdoc(7) needs an overview before diving into the specifics, i can copy the "MACRO OVERVIEW" section from https://man.openbsd.org/mdoc#MACRO_OVERVIEW into the beginning of groff_mdoc(7), probably between A MANUAL PAGE TEMPLATE and CONVENTIONS, but i'm open to suggestions for the exact location, and to tweaking it if you think that's necessary. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/