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Date:      Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:32:37 -0300 (ADT)
From:      "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>
To:        Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-1?q?Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no>
Cc:        Michael Carr <sphaleotas@blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject:   Re: RMS says: "Use BSD, for goodness sake!"
Message-ID:  <20030626172910.N98477@hub.org>
In-Reply-To: <xzp1xxg8u2v.fsf@dwp.des.no>
References:  <4.3.2.7.2.20030625214311.00e5e240@localhost> <20030626010357.J508@hub.org> <20030626110336.GW34365@iconoplex.co.uk> <xzp1xxg8u2v.fsf@dwp.des.no>

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On Thu, 26 Jun 2003, Dag-Erling [iso-8859-1] Smørgrav wrote:

Potentially stupid questions, but ...

> > bc - an undergrad could re-implement based on man page
>
> With a good arbitrary-precision math library, yes.  The one we have
> happens to be GPLed.

Is there anything at the operating system level that uses/requires bc, or
could it be moved to ports ... ?  Like, I use it, but its a command line
tool, not something I've seen used in scripts ...

> > groff - look at alternate doc formatting?
>
> Not bloody likely, unless you volunteer to convert all the man pages
> (including translations).

What was used before groff?  there was an nroff and troff before groff,
no?  or is it just that there are alot of 'groff-isms' that we're using in
the man pages?

> > less - re-implementable quite quickly
>
> You might be surprised...

... but any reason why its part of hte main system instead of just put
into ports?

> > man - could be re-implemented based on file format information known
>
> This is a SMOP.

SMOP? *raised eyebrow*



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