Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 10:50:39 +0000 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: Rich Morin <rdm@cfcl.com> Cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: man, TOC, xml... Message-ID: <20010117105038.B1715@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> In-Reply-To: <p05001941b68a80360470@[192.168.168.205]>; from rdm@cfcl.com on Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 03:36:54PM -0800 References: <Pine.BSF.4.30.0101161434550.25916-100000@k2.vol.cz> <20010116172751.A3414@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> <20010116095547.A13543@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> <20010116182434.A7327@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> <p05001941b68a80360470@[192.168.168.205]>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 03:36:54PM -0800, Rich Morin wrote:
> The good news about going to a markup language such as SGML or XML
> is that the process can turn "documents" into "data structures".
> This can be used to facilitate indexing, checks for completeness or
> errors, etc.
Yep.
> The bad news, of course, is that the effort involved in turning a
> man page into high-quality SGML is substantial. Semantic mark-up
> is tricky; humans have a hard time with it and I don't know of any
> programs that do it yet. In short, it requires Real Work (TM).
Ah ha. Look at mdoc(7) (some of the man page mavens should speak up at
this point as well). We've[1] been migrating away from presentational
to semantic markup in the man pages for a while now.
I'm pretty certain I've seen software that will do man2docbook (or
man2refentry), but I'm damned if I can find it in my mail archive at the
moment.
> That said, there is quite a bit that can (and should) be done to
> automate the semantic mark-up process. I have heard, for instance,
> of an experiment in which a replacement set of troff macros was used
> to convert man pages (in mandoc format) into XML.
Ah. That could've been what I saw.
Bingo;
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/199912/msg00145.html
which, by a process of chasing down FTP links, resolves to
http://polyglotman.sourceforge.net/
Anyone want to take a look at it in more detail?
N
--
Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95.
Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission,
hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless.
Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.
-- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010117105038.B1715>