Re: C--

[Sascha Wildner <saw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Justin C. Sherrill wrote:
> On Fri, June 1, 2007 3:52 pm, Sascha Wildner wrote:
>
> > So... I'm kinda unsure here if the perspective of being able to remove
> > C++ from the build justifies reverting to the old mdoc macros. What do
> > the rest of you think?
>
> Would there be any quantifiable benefit greater than the increased hassle
> when importing man pages?  You didn't list any, so it sounds like there's
> no real reason to do it.

Well, the heirloom-doctools are written in C, as opposed to groff (C++), 
which afaik is the only thing in base that needs C++. Replacing groff 
could mean we would no longer have to build C++ by default (only when, 
say, WANT_CPLUSPLUS or so is set). So, shorter build time, smaller ISOs, 
etc.

Other benefits (?): The heirloom doctools accept UTF8 input (while groff 
can only output it, but I'm not 100% sure). Also they're derived from 
the original tools (think of gawk vs. one true awk).

Stuff visible to the user: Not much, I think.

Sascha

--
http://yoyodyne.ath.cx