Re: Manual pages and POD format
On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 19:16:26 +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 04:26:33PM +0300, Jari Aalto wrote:
> > I noticed that current ones are traditional roff. With POD the pages
> > would be easier to edit and maintain, and diffs would be more clear too.
> >
> > If there would be interest in changing to use the Perl POD format I'll
> > volunteer for the work.
>
> After doing some work on the man pages these last few days I actually
> wondered the same thing. Editing roff directly is just no fun at all...
> Before switching to a new format it would be good to research the
> alternatives, though. I personally know docbook-to-man (which is no huge
> win in readability in my opinion ;), POD (very simple, but also somewhat
> limited in what you can express), and asciidoc (has more possibilities
> than POD while still being simple, but the syntax isn't really stable
> [see recent version 7 -> version 8 move] and somehwat underdocumented).
I don't have much problem with roff manpages. Also if they are currently
considered not readable, that could be improved as well, as an
alternative. Something else to consider is the po4a interaction.
regards,
guillem
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