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Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX
From: |
James K. Lowden |
Subject: |
Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX |
Date: |
Mon, 7 May 2012 15:06:17 -0400 |
On Sat, 5 May 2012 21:25:50 -0400
Steve Izma <address@hidden> wrote:
I found your story facinating, especially the observation that groff,
because it's a filter, is well suited to typesetting *any* input. One
might say groff provides an abstract printer in the same sense that Unix
provides an abstract machine.
> Any white space at the beginning or end of such a
> block can be discarded and the proper spacing decisions turned
> over to the macro definition. An in-line element (emphasis, small
> caps, superior numbers) not only needs surrounding white space
> (or lack of it) detected and preserved, it also breaks up the
> enclosing block, leaving a tail (depending on the kind of parser
> you're using).
What is "tail" here, please? I thought I understood until then.
> So far I have always needed to detect and define
> separately whatever in-line elements a document uses, which
> means that writing a general-purpose formatter for XML seems
> virtually impossible.
Why is it not possible to divide and conquer? If we know the set of
tags and every tag is either block or inline (never both), why can't a
dictionary of tag properties permit uniform handling of all in-line
elements?
--jkl
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, (continued)
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Eric S. Raymond, 2012/05/03
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Meg McRoberts, 2012/05/03
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Clarke Echols, 2012/05/03
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Meg McRoberts, 2012/05/03
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Clarke Echols, 2012/05/03
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Steve Izma, 2012/05/05
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX,
James K. Lowden <=
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Steve Izma, 2012/05/08
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Pierre-Jean, 2012/05/08
- Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, James K. Lowden, 2012/05/09
Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, James K. Lowden, 2012/05/03
Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX, Larry Kollar, 2012/05/08