Michael Treibton <mtreib...@googlemail.com> [2014-08-24 00:41:19 +0100]: > On 24 August 2014 00:09, Glenn Golden <g...@zplane.com> wrote: > > I would offer the following encouragement to Michael: Every person (without > > exception that I recall) who over the years I've badgered, browbeaten, > > encouraged, or required to use *roff has been very happy that they took the > > plunge. You may laugh that it's 40+ years old, but so are cat, ls, od, > > sort, > > uniq, ........ > > ok - but i don't see any other alternatives being offered here. if > asciidoc is that bad, how comes other projects including Git use it > and have well structured man pages? they do ok out of using asciidoc, > so why wouldnt mvwm? >
I'll leave critique of alternatives to those more familiar with them. Regarding your observation that asciidoc is capable of generating decent man pages and other documents, I would offer the analogy that programs like WordStar, FrameMaker, WordPerfect, DisplayWriter, ElectricPencil, Interleaf, [insert dozens more here]... were also capable of rendering decent-looking documents. But how many source documents written in those languages would it even be possible to render today at all, in any form whatsoever? To be fair, asciidoc (due to its simplicity) may not die as quickly and thoroughly as did all the above. But still, I would opine that 40 years from now, it will have been supplanted. Otoh, I suspect that professional- grade low-level tools like troff and TeX (upon which are built numerous macro packages for ease of use, mdoc being one of them) will survive indefinitely, just as they have survived (and even flourished, among documentation professionals) for the past 40 years, and for the same reasons: The underlying substrate is very high quality, and they perform a single function very well. The Unix philosophy. The same reason cat, ls, sort, .... are still around. > > If you don't watch this decision it will look like the same thing as > docbook did - that it is here for no reason. > You may be right, Michael. But imo, the opposite is more likely: Documents written for heavily worked over low-level tools like troff and using well- known macro packages (like -man, -mm, -mdoc, etc.) are more likely to survive the test of time. Anecdotally: A few years ago I was asked to reproduce a paper I'd written in the early 90's. It was in troff, using Bell Labs' "Memorandum Macros" package. With about 15 minutes googling for a modern equivalent of that package, and perhaps another hour or so of dorfing around with small style details, I was able to re-render the paper in camera-ready PDF form at 1200 dpi (including numerous images). I would not be surprised to be able to do pretty much the same thing 20 years from now, other than personal impediments like senility or being dead, which are problems of another sort. But I bet troff will outlive me. Just my 2c. But to this point, I think history backs up that view. Anyway, to end on an encouraging note: "Try it, you'll like it". Regards, Glenn
