On Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at 11:54:11AM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > Ingo Schwarze <schwa...@usta.de>: > > The classical man(7) language is a purely presentational language > > and contains exactly three semantic macros as exceptions: TH, SH, SS. > > So basically, nothing except titles is semantic in there. > I'm aware that we're stuck with presentation-level markup in man macros.
I don't see why we are stuck. If there were macros that supported a semantic representation of the common man page structures they could be added to -man. I imagine: .SYNOPSIS .Command man .FlagArgOpt C file .FlagArgOpt d .FlagArgOpt D .LongArgOptOpt warnings warnings . . . .Option section .Args page .Command man .FlagArg -k .Option "apropos options" .Args regexp : .DESCRIPTION .Command man is the system's manual pager. Each .Arg page argument given to .Command man is normally producing (with appropriate bold and italics) SYNOPSIS man [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] . . . [section] page ... man -k [apropos options] regexp ... . . . DESCRIPTION man is the system's manual pager. Each page argument given to man is normally . . . I dare say most people who write man pages copy one that is close enough to where they think they are going and edit like crazy. (Start from an empty file? I don't think so.) Once there are significant number of man pages in that style, the ecology would slowly change over time. Maybe within my life time. Which is quite a thought. I was in my mid-20s with I first encountered UNIX. -- Mike Bianchi Foveal Systems 973 822-2085 mbian...@foveal.com http://www.AutoAuditorium.com http://www.FovealMounts.com