Michael Treibton <[email protected]> [2014-08-25 14:48:41 +0100]: > > i received an email from Glenn Golden who seems to know lots about > mdoc - maybe he can help? >
I'll be glad to if I can. mdoc(7) is probably a decent place to start, if somewhat terse like most man pages. I did some fairly detailed rework on a few existing man pages a few years back, and was able to learn enough just from mdoc(7) to get the job done. (But to be fair, I also was familiar with the 'mm' and 'an' macro packages already, so perhaps mdoc.7 is not really the best place to start for a newcomer.) There's a tutorial man page too, mdoc.samples(7), which looks pretty decent, though I've not read it in detail. But certainly, working from an existing man page as a basic template is probably the best way to start. I'd suggest choosing a fairly complex one, so you can see how to some of the more detailed formatting and style stuff is accomplished. Another tip is to use gs(1) with the "monitor file state" option enabled to provide near-instantaneous re-rendering in realtime. So as you make changes in the file, you can see the result immediately as soon as you groff(1) it (which you can of course invoke from within any ATE.) Pseudo-WYSIWYG! :) > > although he seems to dislike you intently!! > Wow, all I can say is: Oyoyoy... no good deed goes unpunished! The obvious intent of my note to you was to un-discourage you from taking Thomas' dogmatic "this conversation is over" too seriously and decide not to help with the doc. I really winced that you chose to (mis)characterize my feelings toward him in public here on the list, since my note to you was obviously private. In any case, it's certainly not true that I dislike Thomas, intensely or otherwise, only that he's a bit of a conundrum, a force for Good and Evil on the list: Technically excellent and always helpful, but occasionally also disruptive due to his language habits. (And in view of your angry initial reply to him, telling him that he ought to "leave the list", it certainly seemed as though you were offended, hence it seemed a worthwhile effort on my part to try to calm the situation a bit.) Btw, you forgot to mention that I also said of Thomas: "...he's a highly skilled developer, and has been nothing short of extraordinarily helpful to people coming here with questions and problems. He's also written a good deal of the code and doc. On a technical level, I find myself in agreement with most of his views, not only about fvwm per se, but about coding and doc in general. IMO, he is a top-notch programmer and has his technical head on straight." And after offering a critical opinion of his occasionally curt manner on the list, also added "On the other hand, I do think that behind the gruff and sometimes offensive exterior, he's truly a nice and decent fellow." How you got from the above to "intensely disliking" him, I don't know, but just for the record, it's absolutely not true. Thomas is who he is, and if you don't like his manner -- and honestly, I don't sometimes -- then you can either interact with the list read-only, as I mostly have, or just get used to it. He's who he is, and isn't going to change. Hth, Regards, Glenn
