Re: Manual pages

[rob@darkstar.cygnus.com (Rob Savoye) writes:]

> At Cygnus we're using texinfo.

I'm not tremendously attached to roff-ish text formatting, but I *do* want
a text formatting system whose ability to generate readable output from
source approximates a "cat" of a file. groff was rejected on this basis. I
have little experience with TeX (did I capitalize it correctly?) but I seem
to recall that it was HUGE.

I also want to avoid the complexity of the manX/catX for caching text. Man
pages are meant to be viewed quickly, so whatever technology we use should
generate its output quickly, not generate it so slowly that you have to go
back and add kludges to make up for its (lack of) performance.

Note, these comments apply exclusively to man pages. The requirements of a
"tip of the finger" documentation reference system are unique, and I think
the choices you've outlined here are great for README, Info, papers, and so
forth.

                                                Andy
Received on Tue May 10 07:46:02 1994