[rescue] My Best Rescue to Date.. Ever

[Richard]

In article <b9ce685f0601191104j2ad15b7fsf0ee66d8dafaab54 at mail.gmail.com>,
    velociraptor <velociraptor at gmail.com>  writes:

> On 1/19/06, der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:
> > > [...manpages using -mandoc instead of -mdoc...]
> > > As far as I could tell, there was no good reason for changing which
> > > macros they were using, other than NIH.
> >
> > Actually, there is: all the same reasons why it's better to write (in
> > TeX) \emphasis{...} instead of {\bf ...} when you mean emphasis, or
> > \chapterheading{...} instead of \centerline{\biggrm ...} for a chapter
> > heading, or the analogs in any other markup language.
> >
> > ".Op Fl x" is, similarly, better than (say) ".BR [ -x ]" (or whatever
> > you'd use in the old paradigm - I've forgotten).
> 
> i.e. structural/functional tagging instead of format-based tagging--
> like the difference b/w full-blown SGML over HTML, or structural
> document stylesheets in FrameMaker vs. whateverthehell M$
> Word uses.

Perfectly reasonable for writing new man pages, but existing man pages
that use the format-based tags should still work.  In other words, if
you provide a troff clone, it should have a compatible set of an
macros so that 'my-troff-clone -man foo.1' will work.
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ:
          <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/>
             Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty
                <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>