Andreas, your post describes the "this is how it is" very well. I would
not argue with it.
What I am saying is that this is all wrong.
You say that bludgeoning is not personal, but educational. Please tell
this to the red faced guy.
And what is the purpose of telling people how silly and lazy they are?
You certainly don't get any positive reaction on the other side.
The only "positive" is on your side, that you feel superior to the
other guy.
But that's arrogance, not education, don't you agree?
And we should know that arrogance has many nasty side effects.
I still remember how much I wanted that little forerunner of a Unix
workstation, before Microsoft came along.
How could it happen that they ate alive a technically far-far superior
and free Unix?
I think that the arrogance of many of Unix's proponents had a lot to do
with it. Your dad is probably computationally
literate and you certainly don't think that he is stupid. Now show him
a few Unix man pages and ask him
to make sense of symlinks and Co.
Would you tell him that he is no good, or would you realize that the
writers did not have the slightest clue about writing? They failed the
first test, that you should know who you are writing for.
Those who only know how to write for themselves, naturally try to make
a virtue out of their inability by insisting that the whole world now
should rise to their high level by reading this, analyzing that,
experiment with
those, all Unix.
That they are designers of cars or rockets, and would rather spend time
to learn more about thermodynamics, just
doesn't matter, because Unix is the one and all. Well, it is good, very
good. But it is not all, it is not even at the top
of the food chain.
I hope that you agree with this little perspective and then we can go
back to the wonders and problems of groff.
With a bit of humility, if possible.
Miklos Somogyi
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