Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 08:20:54PM -0500, Dave Kemper wrote: > Subject: Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do > .index in groff?) > > On 7/31/20, Steve Izma wrote: > > When I adjust the kerning (or mortising, if necessary) > > in values

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

In all fairness, the only thing stopping me from attempting this is my lack of confidence (and general dislike) of C++. Eventually, I might take a crack… probably in an effort to marry the miracle called variable fonts with my love of Troff, fuelled by my lifelong obsession

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

Hi, Dave Kemper wrote on Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 08:17:25PM -0500: > On 7/31/20, Peter Schaffter wrote: >> Several years ago, I fielded the idea that, instead of chasing after >> the Grail of paragraph-at-once, groff's line-formatting algorithm be >> improved instead. I worked on systems that used

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On 7/31/20, Steve Izma wrote: > When I adjust the kerning (or mortising, if necessary) > in values of one-hundredth or one-thousandth of a point, Everything I've found online says that mortising is another (less common) term for kerning, but you're using them here as if they're different processe

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On 7/31/20, Peter Schaffter wrote: > Several years ago, I fielded the idea that, instead of chasing after > the Grail of paragraph-at-once, groff's line-formatting algorithm be > improved instead. I worked on systems that used the formatting > strategy I proposed > > https://lists.gnu.org/archi

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

Steve Izma wrote: > > As a simple curiosity, to help me improve my typographic eye, could > > you please explain me in which situation you need a higher resolution? > > For almost everything I typeset, especially books and > newsletter-type publications, I always at least a few places > where I ne

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

Hello alls, Peter Schaffter wrote: > On Fri, Jul 31, 2020, Steve Izma wrote: > > ...I would like to caution people who think that the > > implementation of that algorithm [Knuth-Plass] in groff is going > > to lessen the effort that goes into high-quality typography. > > Again, I agree. That's q

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On Fri, Jul 31, 2020, Steve Izma wrote: > For almost everything I typeset, especially books and > newsletter-type publications, I always at least a few places > where I need to use track kerning on a paragraph in order to get > good word spacing and to shorten or lengthen paragraphs in order > to a

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

Dave Kemper wrote: > On 7/31/20, Steve Izma wrote: >> I found that the TeX paragraph-at-a-time justification had to >> be scrutinized and adjusted just as much as my groff work. The >> trade-off to getting better word spacing was that often TeX just >> failed and overset lines. > > Do you kno

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On 7/31/20, Steve Izma wrote: > I found that the TeX paragraph-at-a-time justification had to > be scrutinized and adjusted just as much as my groff work. The > trade-off to getting better word spacing was that often TeX just > failed and overset lines. Do you know if either of the roffs that hav

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 08:52:59PM +0200, Pierre-Jean Fichet wrote: > Subject: Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do > .index in groff?) > > Larry Kollar wrote: > > I’m using neatroff for printed fiction,... > > (including font features like

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

Hello Larry, hello alls, Larry Kollar wrote: > I’m using neatroff for printed fiction, because it directly supports TrueType > (including font features like small caps and extended ligatures) and > paragraph- > at-once justification. Still, I chafe at its low resolution (1/720in vs > Groff’s >

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

> It's not a question of which implementation has the bigger market > share, but which has the richer feature set. Currently each of them > can do things the other can't. There’s `.if [.g]` and `.if [.neat]` to test for a Groff or Neatroff environment, respectively. Presumably, Heirloom has a si

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff

> You misunderstand. Some people don't *want* to unite. Some might actively > resist an attempt at "unification". you're right: i don't get it and never will (especially when there are so few people rely on for maintaining stuff). regards marc

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff

> yes. but it doesn't mean we can't unite at some point You misunderstand. Some people don't *want* to unite. Some might actively resist an attempt at "unification". On Mon, 27 Jul 2020 at 18:50, Marc Chantreux wrote: > > Lack of "unity" is part of what makes open source what it is. > > yes. b

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff

> Lack of "unity" is part of what makes open source what it is. yes. but it doesn't mean we can't unite at some point. that's why i was asking. regards. marc

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff

Even if the entire world agreed on licensing, there'd still be disagreements about implementation or philosophy. Lack of "unity" is part of what makes open source what it is. On Mon, 27 Jul 2020 at 07:34, Marc Chantreux wrote: > hello Ingo, > > thanks for this detailed anwser. > > > The reason

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff

hello Ingo, thanks for this detailed anwser. > The reason i'm sticking to groff is that groff has been the typesetter > predominantly used by BSD systems during the last 25 years, that i think everyone else have good reasons to be stuck on its own prefered implementation. > I think it's a gener

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On 7/26/20, John Gardner wrote: > What I find laughable as that neither of them support right-to-left > languages, Good point. I wonder why this never came up during the mission-statement discussion; it seems like another major expansion that ought to be a long-term goal.

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff

Hi Marc, >> software to have. Neatroff comes to the rescue on that front, so... >> we're basically looking at unifying *three* major implementations. ;-) > i guess the number of contributors of all those projects is not that > big so i wonder if someone thought about a join effort on one > implem

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

hello, as a newcomer user but involved to other open source projects, i'm hooked by this: > software to have. Neatroff comes to the rescue on that front, so... we're > basically looking at unifying *three* major implementations. ;-) i guess the number of contributors of all those projects is not

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

> > That groff cannot do the first at all, and requires external helpers > (one of them not even shipped with the package) for the latter two, > ironically makes it look more outdated than its "heirloom" counterpart. What I find laughable as that neither of them support right-to-left languages, w

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On 2020-07-26 Dave Kemper wrote: > It doesn't so much let groff natively understand modern fonts as > convert those fonts into a form groff does understand (Type 1 > PostScript) and install them in a place groff checks automatically. > By default this requires root privs, though if you don't have

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

On 7/26/20, Richard Morse wrote: > Which is the external helper that lets it natively understand modern fonts? > That would be huge! Yeah, it's confusingly part of the mom macro package documentation, even though it's a general-purpose groff script. See http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-06.html#in

Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

> On Jul 26, 2020, at 8:24 AM, Dave Kemper wrote: > > Anyone interested in groff's long-term goals should check out its > mission statement > (http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/groff-mission-statement.html), > crafted after much discussion on this list several years ago. Three > core improvement