🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JJC.90Dec31140544@jclark.jclark.UUCP> jjc@jclark.UUCP (James Clark) writes:
>In article <1990Dec27.155046.14520@cbnewsl.att.com> npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes:
>groff already does this.
>
>   In addition, we should allow a "-7b" option to force troff
>   output to be in the ASCII (ISO 646, 7 bit) subset.  This would permit
>   mailing of ditroff output to the part of North America that
>   hasn't caught on to ISO 8859.
>
>I'm unconvinced by this.  What's wrong with using uuencode?  In any
>case, if you want to send a document to somebody, it would seem to me
>to be better to send either the ditroff input file or the
>postprocessor output (since the ditroff output is tailored to a
>particular device anyway).

Uuencode/uudecode are not universally available.

If the ditroff input file is in an 8-bit character set, it is unmailable
via some mail transport software.  Likewise for 8-bit output, hence the
desire to restrict the output to a 7-bit character set.

The 'd' and 'i' in ditroff atnd for "device" and "independent",
respectively.  Ditroff output is *not* tailored to any particular device.
The ditroff output can be interpreted by postprocessors for specific
devices.  The same cannot necessarily be said of other text procssors
(perhaps including groff).

Postprocessor output *is* tailored to a specific device, hence is not
suitable for widespread distibution.  Also, note that some of these
device-specific output formats (such as PostScript) are both extremely
verbose (more so than ditroff output) and may include 8-bit characters.
--
	Bruce Lilly		blilly!balilly!bruce@sonyd1.Broadcast.Sony.COM