🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <23320A@erik.naggum.no> enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) writes:
 > Nils-Peter Nelson <npn@alice.att.com> writes:
 > |
 > |   When Unix System Labs dropped troff, etc as a standard
 > |   part of System V, the vendors all went in different
 > |   directions. USL now sells troff separately as part of
 > |   Documenter's Workbench, and the latest releases (3.2 and
 > |   3.3) contain a "merged man" macro that includes definitions
 > |   used by BSD, Sun, Research and System V. There is no longer
 > |   a single standard.
 > 
 > The Committee for Common Man is working on this.  Contact Lar Kaufman
 > <lark@world.std.com>.  One of the goals of CFCM is to produce an SGML
 > document type definition for manual pages that will enable bidirectional
 > conversion between troff and the SGML document type.
 > 

You mean generic troff or troff with yet another macro package?  Going
from SGML to troff isn't a big deal, but going the other way is a big
hassle unless you only allow a well defined subset of troff.

Even yet another macro package is not be the answer.  It is difficult
to prevent the user to sneak in his own macro definitions.  You
probably want to have a filter checking for that stuff.  There is an
example in this area:  The OSF have brought out a Reference Semantic
Markup Language (RSML).  It is meant for the ``Documentors Tool
Environment User's Guide''.

I bet that there are yet another couple of groups doing similar
standards efforts.  Maybe the best one win.  (Didn't ast already
remarked that there are so many standards to choose from?).

	jaap