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RE: [Groff] #ifdef WIDOW_CONTROL???


From: Ted Harding
Subject: RE: [Groff] #ifdef WIDOW_CONTROL???
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 12:55:41 +0100 (BST)

On 30-Aug-01 Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab wrote:
> Hi there!
> 
> I've been lurking on this list for a week or so. This is is my 10th or
> possibly 11th anniversary is a groff user. I like this system a lot;
> and groff is the only formatting system I really know.
> 
> The reason for that is that I, as a newbie UNIX user failed to install
> TeX on my Decstation. I just couldn't get all paths and environmental
> variables right. Groff compiled and installed, and it was just to start
> writing papers, and that was what I was payed for at the time. Enough
> about me and my relation to groff.

Welcome to the groff list! (especially so from someone whose relatinship
with groff is much like yours, though I'd been using Unix troff since
some years earlier, and started using groff on DOS around 1991; so
to a large extent the advent of TeX passed me by). Anyway, we hope
you will benefit from being with us.

> I've started to read the gtroff sources, for the fun of it. And found
> these preprocessor defines
> 
>       WIDOW_CONTROL
> 
> and
> 
>       COLUMN
> 
> It does something like pushing more lines to the next page to eliminate
> widows. Haven't looked more at the code, but I don't like WIDOWs in my
> texts. (cf input.cc, input.h and env.h). Have anyone tried it?
> 
> The COLUMN code implements a vj request implemented in input.cc and
> column.cc seems to be all about this. Has anyone experimented with
> this? 

Though these are present in the code, there inclusion in the compilation
is conditional (on putting #define WIDOW_CONTROL and #define COLUMN
in the source code). As far as I know, while some people have been
intrigued by what might happen if they were compiled in (including
me) no-one has seriously tried it out. (If I'm wrong, may I be
promptly corrected). Otherwise, these requests are "undefined".

I suspect that these were ideas that James Clark intended to develop,
but did not complete by the time he decided to move away from groff.
As a result, this code may produce unwanted effects -- a possible
reason for "#ifdef"fing them out.

Best wishes,
Ted.

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Date: 30-Aug-01                                       Time: 12:55:41
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