#linuxcnc-devel Logs

Nov 13 2021

04:13 AM pere: seb_kuzminsky: created <URL: https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/1376 > to track the proposal to drop nroff manual pages and maintain them as asciidoc instead.
01:05 PM smoe: seb_kuzminsky: Hi?!
03:15 PM seb_kuzminsky: hi?
03:20 PM pere: seb_kuzminsky: too late. :)
03:20 PM pere: seb_kuzminsky: how are things?
03:48 PM seb_kuzminsky: things are pretty good over here - how about you?
03:52 PM seb_kuzminsky: i like this transition from roff to asciidoc for the manpages, thanks for working on it
03:53 PM seb_kuzminsky: have you found the automativ translation from roff to adoc pretty accurate so far?
04:21 PM roycroft: what? is mandoc being abandoned by linuxcnc?
06:00 PM seb_kuzminsky: roycroft: no, not at all
06:01 PM seb_kuzminsky: pere is working on a change on the back end, so that the manpages are built from asciidoc sources, rather than maintained in roff (manpage format) in the git repo
06:01 PM seb_kuzminsky: the roff format is pretty archaic and hard to work with
06:01 PM seb_kuzminsky: we'll still build all the same manpages as we do now
06:02 PM seb_kuzminsky: hi smoe ?!?!? :-)
06:02 PM smoe: heya!
06:02 PM smoe: sidenote - I like the roff format, and knuth wrote whole books with it .)
06:02 PM smoe: But yes, I already gave it a heart on github
06:03 PM seb_kuzminsky: i guess it's a matter of taste ;-)
06:03 PM * roycroft notes that roff has not existed in over 50 years
06:04 PM roycroft: it was last used on a pdp-11 running 2nd edition unix
06:04 PM smoe: You received the email by John and his pointer on https://github.com/machinekit/EMCApplication/issues/2 about possibly bringing this back to LinuxCNC?
06:05 PM roycroft: a more accurate notation would be *roff, as that would refer not only to the long-extinct roff, but nroff, troff, ditroff, and groff as well
06:06 PM roycroft: and knuth wrote tex to replace *roff, and wrote metafont to generate fonts for tex
06:07 PM * roycroft has typeset many books using *roff, and has written two major macro packages for doing so - one for typesetting cookbooks and one for typesetting books generated from data exported from informix databases which he wrote
06:07 PM smoe: roycroft - this is the moment when I should find my source. googling ...
06:07 PM roycroft: what source?
06:08 PM roycroft: that roff has run on something newer than 2nd edition?
06:08 PM roycroft: or that knuth used *roff for his books?
06:08 PM smoe: Not for all his books but some ... I had read an interview but .. gosh .. that is a while ago.
06:09 PM roycroft: he may have used troff for a bit either while he was writing tex, or before he wrote tex
06:09 PM roycroft: he wrote tex specifically because of two major shortcomings of troff - both of which i am in complete agreement with knuth about:
06:10 PM roycroft: 1. eqn is a rudamentary, at best, equation formatter
06:11 PM roycroft: 2. troff is line-oriented, and while it knows about page lengths and page breaks, and can handle macros that can adjust for in-line footnotes easily, it is horrible at making whole pages look nice, as it lacks word spacing and letter kerning capability that examines previous and subsequent lines
06:12 PM roycroft: i find that metafont-generated fonts to be very nice, but lacking in variety
06:12 PM roycroft: but tex certainly makes pages look prettier than troff ever could
06:12 PM roycroft: and now that tex supports postscript fonts the limitations of metafont are irrelevant
06:14 PM roycroft: all i can say is while knuth may have published some books using troff, that is not the example one wants to use as an argument in support of troff, as the entire reason tex was written was to work around the inherent problems of troff
06:17 PM smoe: I don't find anything - wish I could delete my comment. Please unread.
06:18 PM roycroft: ok :)
06:18 PM roycroft: i'd be willing to bet you're a bit younger than me, and do not remember when tex was written :)
06:19 PM seb_kuzminsky: i've never lived in a world that didn't include tex :-)
06:20 PM roycroft: it wasn't as primative as you might think
06:23 PM roycroft: i was doing my typesetting/publishing work in those days, so i was pretty well-attuned to what was going on
06:23 PM roycroft: i started writing troff macros in the late '70s, and did a lot of typesetting from then through the early '90s
06:40 PM smoe: I wrote my first words with a regular pen on regular paper in the mid 70s.
10:02 PM pere: seb_kuzminsky: well, I did not check every manual page, and have noticed some weaknesses, but suspect it might be good enough but can not be the judge of it.
11:04 PM pere: seb_kuzminsky: did you get my wnpp email about pycam?