Re: What features would you like in GNU troff?

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Article #6490

#6490

From: Piercarlo Grandi
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 1989 13:19

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In article <JJC.89May31220314@jclark.UUCP> jjc@jclark.UUCP (James Clark) writes:
    I have been implementing a troff which I'm going to give to GNU, and I
    would like to get some input on what features people would like to see
    in it.

Wow! great! I have been waiting for this to happen!

    
    I would welcome suggestions both for completely new features and for
    extensions or improvements to existing features.

If you can, the single most important feature would a way to preserve
and restore the stateof the troff, something like "undump/unexec" support.
This would be better than "compiled" macro packages ala SystemII/V troff.
    
    It can produce both TeX .dvi and PostScript output, and uses TeX .tfm
    font metric files.

Please, oh please get out ditroff's di format instead of PostScript. There
is no reason to output PostScript directly, but ditroff's di format is so
much better than dvi (two reasons: simpler structure, user specified resolution
and deltas). Also, ditroff devXXXX/YYYY.out as well as tfm...

I also hope that just like ditroff, you can specify the output printer
resolution in both X and Y, and that the formatter computes all motions
etc... as multiples of those resolutions. This makes output quality of low
resolution printers very much better than with tex/dvi, and easier.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk

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From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: What features would you like in GNU troff?
Summary: di output, not dvi!
Message-ID: <986@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jun 89 13:19:35 GMT
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth
 (Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal)
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