I will disagree. [n,t]roff is a *nix wide standard that works well. The problem
with most other doc formats these days is that they assume sime big bloaty
graphics environment exists, and that's just not always true! *roff/man will
give outstanding doc on nothing more than a vt100 terminal session (ssh,
serial, whatever) with almost zero installed footprint. If your option can
still do that, then perhaps, but otherwise, it condemns server users to have no
usable doc. Remember, docs are there to help the user/reader, not necessarily
to be a dumbed down process for the writer (although both have thier place).
Another choice would be a <whatever> ==> nroff translator, and give the end
user the choice.
(To that end, I've never seen another doc format that consistently worked, and
didn't have a huge footprint . . . )
Just my $.02 . . . if it isn't broken, don't fix it . . .
- Tim
On May 12, 2025 7:40:31 AM EDT, Sam Varshavchik <[email protected]> wrote:
>Jim Klimov via Nut-upsuser writes:
>
>> Alas, with NUT's long history starting when computers were tools of the
>> relatively few engineer nerd types, much of the documentation remains
>> "elitist".
>>
>> Partially due to this, I've started a new manual page (after release v2.8.3)
>> so people can get a reasonable overview of the NUT layering and some
>> practical caveats by uttering `man nut`.
>
>It also doesn't help things that nroff has survived since ancient times, back
>when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
>
>nroff is long overdue for retirement. It served its purpose. But there are
>better tools out there, now. Sadly, Linux still insists on keeping this fossil.
>
>> Surprisingly, there was no such thing for over the quarter of a century that
>> the project has been out there!
>
>That's about the timeframe back when I started writing my manual pages in
>Docbook XML, and generating beautiful HTML documentation from it, as well as
>legacy man pages.
>
>I even started a project that successfully converted all Linux manual pages
>from nroff into Docbook XML. Sadly it did not get any traction, and I shut it
>down a few years ago.
>
>I humbly suggest that you use Docbook XML for your original source, and then
>just have it spew out nroff, and also have something nice that can be thrown
>onto a web server.
>
--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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