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| From: | Larry Kollar |
| Subject: | Re: [Groff] gtroff & soelim don't recognize ~ in paths |
| Date: | Tue, 11 Apr 2006 08:52:41 -0400 |
Tadziu Hoffmann wrote:
**] And remember there is one fundamental design difference
between groff and TeX: TeX has exactly *one* "device"
(in groff parlance), and we expect exactly the same output
in all implementations. Groff has never had that aim.
On the contrary, output is explicitly device dependent
(let's say "device optimized"). Why not generalize
this and allow differences even for the same device
on different installations? If you want people to see
exactly what you have, send the the finished, formatted
output (text, PS, PCL, whatever). If you send them
the source, expect them to edit it and get different
results anyway.
IMO, this is precisely why groff works so well even today -- the designer's dream of getting exactly the same output on different devices [in the groff sense, not two PostScript printers] is a chimera that has led to all sorts of problems for technical writers who often *have* to publish the same documents as (usually) PDF and HTML. I like that phrase, "device optimized" -- it recognizes that different publishing media work differently.
-- Larry Kollar k o l l a r @ a l l t e l . n e t Unix Text Processing: "UTP Revival" http://unixtext.org/
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