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Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2012 10:09:24 -0400
From: Kurt H Maier <khm-lists@...ma.in>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: documenting musl

On Sat, Sep 08, 2012 at 03:42:59PM +0200, Daniel Cegiełka wrote:
> think it would be a better solution than mandoc etc.? mandoc, like
> musl, is a new and fresh solution with supports modern expectations
> for the documentation system. Why old troff will be better?

mandoc is a program written with the sole aim of replacing groff.  groff
is overengineered and full of useless things and bad licensing.  I get
it.  However, mandoc is a one-trick pony, not suitable for general
typesetting.  why on earth would you have one command for typesetting,
and another command for typesetting in a subset of the first program's
input format?  it's silly.

this is a common paradigm in computing:  over time, a solution becomes
unpleasant.  A new tool is made to resolve the unpleasantness, but the
new tool takes for granted other unpleasant factors, which are then
standardized into the system with the acceptance of the new tool.

mandoc does nothing that roff wouldn't do before, and roff will do
anything mandoc will do.

but rich is right, this is all pointless.  we'll wind up using the doc
tools preferred by the person who actually writes the documentation, as
it should be.

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