Re: [Groff] pic solid attribute

[Leonard Stiles]

On Sat, Jul 22, 2000 at 01:23:22PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
> Can we have some backgrouns on this? I.e. what is "solid" supposed
> to do? The 1991 PIC User Manual (Kernighan, Bell docs #116) gives
> "solid" as an attribute in its "Reference Manual" Appendix, but it
> is not mentioned anywhere else.

> Maybe there is more info in something like the DWB documentation
> (which I don't have).

Neither do I
 
> Meanwhile, the source code of groff pic indicates that (internally)
> "solid" is used for "solid lines" (as opposed to dashed or dotted)
> which is the default for lines anyway unless explcitily given the
> "dashed" or "dotted" attribute.
> 
> However, lex.cc for groff pic does not have "solid" in its list of
> keywords, so it would not be recognised.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure myself, as I've never used non-GNU
pic.

As far as I know, the solid attribute is merely the explicit specification 
of the line type which is assumed implicitly unless the dotted or dashed 
attributes are used.

In the paper by Eric Raymond, it is said to "make [a] closed figure solid",
which makes it sound like it does something like "fill". However, my guess 
is that this is misleading/wrong. (Raymond goes on to say that 
"the solid primitive [sic] is not yet supported in GNU gpic").

Presuming that solid does indeed mean non-dotted/dashed lines, it isn't all 
that useful except possibly to override previously specified dashed or 
dotted. However, it would still be good if gpic were to recognize the 
attribute, if only to support old code which uses it. Due to the rather 
redundant nature of the attribute, adding support for it would not be 
difficult.

-- 
+------------------------------+
| Leonard Stiles <address@hidden> |
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