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Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in


From: John Gardner
Subject: Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:42:08 +1000

In all fairness, the only thing stopping me from attempting this is my lack
of confidence (and general dislike) of C++.

Eventually, I might take a crack… probably in an effort to marry the
miracle called variable fonts <https://v-fonts.com/> with my love of Troff,
fuelled by my lifelong obsession with anything typography-related. Granted,
the code will probably be ported from something I wrote in JavaScript, but
that's besides the point… ;-)

On Thu, 6 Aug 2020 at 00:06, Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Dave Kemper wrote on Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 08:17:25PM -0500:
> > On 7/31/20, Peter Schaffter <peter@schaffter.ca> wrote:
>
> >> Several years ago, I fielded the idea that, instead of chasing after
> >> the Grail of paragraph-at-once, groff's line-formatting algorithm be
> >> improved instead.  I worked on systems that used the formatting
> >> strategy I proposed
> >>
> >>   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2014-03/msg00322.html
> >>
> >> and can confirm that it significantly reduced the amount of
> >> intervention required to achieve good grey on a line-by-line basis.
> >> There wasn't much interest in the proposal back then--I felt a bit
> >> like a voice crying in the wilderness--but maybe it's time to try
> >> crying again?
>
> > I wonder if it's less a lack of interest and more a recognition that
> > we have a shortage of people with the willingness and expertise to
> > make any substantive changes to the groff code.  I, and I'm sure
> > others, welcome any improvements to typographic output, but it's hard
> > to get excited over ideas -- even good ideas -- if no one plans to
> > turn them into working code.  That situation hasn't changed much since
> > 2014.
>
> Exactly.  When you post an idea and five people reply with ten
> arguments why it is unlikely to work, it was often a bad idea.
> But if you get no reply, it may still be an excellent idea.
>
> For example, i often drop out of discussions, even interesting
> discussions, when i don't plan to do the work, or even don't join
> them in the first place in that case.
>
> Yours,
>   Ingo
>
>


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