* Tue 2007-09-25 Frank Lichtenheld <djpig AT debian.org> * Message-Id: 20070925171626.GS24423 AT planck.djpig.de > On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 04:26:33PM +0300, Jari Aalto wrote: > >> I noticed that current ones are traditional roff. With POD the pages >> would be easier to edit and maintain, and diffs would be more clear too. >> >> If there would be interest in changing to use the Perl POD format I'll >> volunteer for the work. > > After doing some work on the man pages these last few days I actually > wondered the same thing. Editing roff directly is just no fun at all... > > Before switching to a new format it would be good to research the > alternatives, though. I personally know docbook-to-man (which is no huge > win in readability in my opinion ;), POD (very simple, but also somewhat > limited in what you can express), and asciidoc (has more possibilities > than POD while still being simple, but the syntax isn't really stable > [see recent version 7 -> version 8 move] and somehwat underdocumented).
POD is well suited for program manuals. Here is and example I wrote to demonstrate POD to the Curl author: http://cante.net/~jaalto/tmp/curl.new/curl.1.html http://cante.net/~jaalto/tmp/curl.new/curl.1.pod http://cante.net/~jaalto/tmp/curl.new/curl.1 The good thing is that it's a native Perl format. Generating asciidoc pages is slower from what I have experiences and would add a extra dependency. Jari -- Welcome to FOSS revolution: we fix and modify until it shines -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]