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Re: Summary of man-page formatting



On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 07:50:02AM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> I think the _solution_ to this problem is a new typesetting engine
> (not anything based on tex or roff), but this has to happen and become
> viable independent of netbsd before we adopt it; if we jump the gun
> it's as likely to become an expensive white elephant as anything else,
> and we already have as many of those as we can afford.
> 
> Like with many other problems, the current situation is poor and
> there's also no particularly viable way forward.

Well, there is lout to consider. Its a selfcontained program written in C only
with no external dependencies and can output in EPS, PS and PDF next to normal
raw text. It supports multi colum, paragraph split prevention, kerning,
references, math layout, graphics etc.

I've never used it for manpage rendering though! A simple `awk' script could
indeed do it as its format is quite easy. Uwe has experience with it :)

It also needs a new home and we could use a good native formatter. I am not
sure what its licence is though and if the author is willing to convert it if
on request if needed. It otherwise might bitrot away.

Anyway, thats my $0.02

Reinoud

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