> I don't want to get carried away with extensions. First, > most people won't use them. Second, I find the semantically > oriented mdoc(7) macro language too big.
Yes, there needs to be a balance: the list of macros needs to be small enough that people can remember which one to use, yet big enough to produce pretty, accessible and searchable manuals. When I look over my man pages, I see only a few constructs: - definition lists I currently use .TP for these, and it works well. I look forward to .LS/.LE enabling them being represented in HTML using DL instead of TABLE. - itemized lists I have had to hack these to make them look good, and .LS/.LE will give me the options I need. - example blocks I use .EX/.EE for these, and it works well in PDF output but fails to use a monospace font in HTML. This is an implementation bug, not a macro-language deficiency. - inline examples Switching to Courier font works fine in PDF output and not at all in HTML. It would be nice to see this translate to CODE, TT, or some such, but it probably doesn't need any macro support. - Sections, subsections, and paragraphs All well-supported: .SH, .SS, .PP To summarize, it seems to me that .LS/.LE fills maybe the only deficiency I feel in the macro language. Nice! > $ sed -i -e 's/^\.PD 0/.LS FIXME 1/' -e 's/^.PD$/.LE/' mypage.man > > ...then make one pass over the document, replacing the "FIXME" with > "definition", "itemized", or "enumerated" as appropriate. I can do that. But what about the bullets (or numbers) in front of every list item? Currently I write bullets in manually with \(bu on each line; I'm hoping that ".LS itemized" will cause .IP to make the bullet for me. What's your vision here? < Stephen
