So they replaced a generic roff system with a specialized man page viewer? Why? I mean, if you're rewriting everything and include a bevvy of output formats, why not make it a proper replacement? Would be quite a bit more unix-y. Yes, maybe a bit more work in the end, but you could always have "oroff 0.1" which only supports a -man subset evolve into a full-fledged implementation. Going from mandoc to "oroff" seems less likely.
(Or I'm just the only one who still occasionally uses ms/tbl/pic…)
> groff amounts to over 5 MB of source code, most of which is C++ and all of which is GPL. It runs slowly, produces uncertain output, and varies in operation from system to system. mdocml strives to fix this (respectively small, C, ISC-licensed, fast and regular).
Those are reason why you wouldn't use groff, it still doesn't explain why – if you're taking the effort – you're not building a proper roff replacement, but some subset bastard program. And then hack stuff like tbl into the main executable. (Never mind that there's Plan 9 roff or the heirloom version)
I get it, nobody really seems to use non-man roff anymore. Still, subsetting and reinventing the wheel (partially) seems a odd solution for this.
> So they replaced a generic roff system with a specialized man page viewer? Why?
Because no one uses roff format for anything other than man pages any more. And even then, it's extremely common to use it only as "object code", output from some higher level/cleaner input format (perldoc, pydoc, docbook/asciidoc). I like that they have high level output formats (pdf, html, ascii) and hope that the package becomes an option in Debian at some point.
(Or I'm just the only one who still occasionally uses ms/tbl/pic…)