🚀 go-pugleaf

I am wondering if the original question is motivated by wanting an
output format suitable for viewing on a computer display instead of on
paper.  The designs of groff and of TeX seem unsuitable for this
purpose, and I do not know if either can be coerced into producing
suitable output.

In hopes of starting a discussion about how a formatter should work
for producing output to read on a display, here are some of my thoughts:

(1) Headers and footers should be put into the dvi output as specials
so that the display program can maintain them at the top and bottom of
the view window as the text is scrolled or paged.

(2) Other specials are needed to distinguish paragraphs from figures
and tables, and make it clear which ones can be filled and which must
be panned.

(3) Paragraph numbers should replace page numbers.  (Line numbers are
useless if the view program reformats paragraphs to fit in the view window.)

I do not know if dvi can be turned into a suitable medium for text
browsers or not, but even a partial job would be useful given the
large amount of text in roff or TeX form.

_Greg


J. Greg Davidson	Institute for Software Research and Development
+1 (619) 452-8059       6231 Branting Street  San Diego, CA  92122  USA
 
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