🚀 go-pugleaf

jimi@h-three.UUCP (jimi) writes:
> diomidis@ecrcvax.UUCP (D. Spinellis) writes:
>> Ditroff supports ligatures:
>
>> miranda6% echo affluent | ditroff | psdit | tail
>> 				% Postscript output for the first page;
>> 				% (Prologue ommited)
>> %%Page: 1 1
>> 10 s 10 xH 0 xS 1 f
>> 576 96(af\257uent)N		% affluent
>> %	 ----			(The fl ligature for Times-Roman)
>> 1 p
>> %%Trailer
>
> In the case of Adobe's fonts,
>however, ditroff can only set the ligatures available in the font.
>
>In the preceding example, "affluent" should not contain an "fl"
>ligature. Rather, it should contain an "ffl" ligature.
>I've wondered why Abobe's otherwise skilled typeface designers
>consider the "ff," "ffi," and "ffl" ligatures unnecessary.

On our system, I obtain the following results:

echo affluent | ditroff -Tps -D | tail 

	% Much large header/prologue removed
	10 R
	10 R
	120 V
	720(a)S
	764 H
		(f)show 10 -.5 mul h (\257)show
	10 R
	848(uent)S
	7920 V
	EP
	%%Trailer
	%%DocumentFonts: Times-Roman
	%%Pages: 1

This shows that ditroff (which in our case is really a shell-script
which adds arguments, calls troff, and pipes results through the
required filters) can do better than falling back on Adobe's lack of
three character ligatures.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Davin Milun    Internet:  milun@cs.Buffalo.EDU
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