🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <622@rna.UUCP> dan@rna.UUCP (Dan Ts'o) writes:
>In article <JJC.89May31220314@jclark.UUCP> jjc@jclark (James Clark) writes:
>	I implemented a NROFF-like program for "typesetting" BRAILLE (also
>does ASCII, source compatible with NROFF/TROFF). For long names, I used
>\{nameofanylength}. Of course macros can be of any length, and builtin
>commands also had more friendly aliases, like .space and .break and .page
>can be used for .sp, .br and .bp.
The only trouble with this is that you can't have long special
symbols like \{pound-sterling} or \{dagger}, because \{ already means
the "then" of an if-then-else, and is legal in generally the same places.

Either \[name] or \<name> are better.  I prefer \[...], because then I
can use existing bracket-matching software (e.g. the % key in vi) to check
things like \\*[array.\\n[index]].

Also, it is useful if all the escape sequences that recognise delimiters
understand [...] (or whatever) as well.
Currently, ditroff does not check that the two delimiters are the same
in all cases, so \l[3i] happens to work, at any rate in the version I have
here, but this is too easy to do by mistake.
	\h[\w[\\*[array.\\n[index]]u]u] is not much better then
	\h'\w'\\*'array.\\n'index]'u'u' and less robust than otroff's
	\h'\w\:\*(A\\n(Ix\:u'u'  (\: was an undocumented delimiter)
but at least yuo can check it automatically, anda combination *is*
more readable:  \h[\w'\\*[array.\\n[index]]u'u] looks best to me.

>	There were some commands missing from TROFF that were need for
>BRAILLE production, like some way of putting a header string at the end
>of the first line of every page:

You migt be able to do this with a macro:
* put the string in place at the top right
* reduce the line length so the text doesn't overwrite it
* make a trap for one line down

* In the trap,
  * increase the line length
  * remove the trap

But it isn't easy to get right first time...

Lee

-- 
Lee Russell Quin, Unixsys UK Ltd, The Genesis Centre, Birchwood,
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