Re: ioperm(2): confusing terminology

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

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Hi astian,

> Date: 2026-09-17 19:09:41+0000
> From: astian <astian@memeware.net>
>
[...]
> > I don't know how you read .md or .rst, but I read them in the terminal,
> > usually with less(1), which doesn't reflow them.
> 
> But you read the rendered manpage, the output of running groff (and co.)
> on the manpage source, right?  If you were to read manpage sources with
> less in the terminal there wouldn't be reflowing either, naturally.
> 
> The point I was making is that newlines in groff_man pages did not seem
> to be more semantic than those in adoc/md/rst/whatever.  Upon rendering,
> paragraph lines are reflowed.  After Robinson's explanation I can see 1
> bit of meaning to them (sentence delimiters).

Yeah, if we used it exclusively as source for formatted manual pages
--just like man(7) is used now--, then I'd be fine reading the formatted
pages.

However, as you said in another email, that would delete the unique
advantage of .md/.rst, and the source would read as bad as man(7) source
(IMO, worse, because the formatting macros would be replaced by weird
 pubctuation, which is more difficult to control --as we've seen in a
 recent mail too--).

I believe kernel maintainers would run away fro .rst if they used
semantic newlines and thus had to format them to read them nicely.

> > Is there any program for reading these in the terminal reflowed?
> 
> I guess there are although I don't personally use one (of course, that's
> the point of these "light markup" formats: they mostly look like plain
> text so you don't much need a renderer).  For example, there are plenty
> of tools to convert these formats to HTML which can then be viewed in a
> terminal browser.  Or one could use pandoc to convert them to *roff
> and... haha ;).

Yeah, it ain't going to work.  Luckily, we've got man(7).  :-)


Have a lovely night!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>

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