Re: [Groff] CW problems

[P. Alejandro Lopez-Valencia]

[Answer to the list *only*. Thanks.]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bernd Warken" <address@hidden>
To: "Meg McRoberts" <address@hidden>; <address@hidden>
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 5:20 AM
Subject: Re: [Groff] CW problems


> On Sun, Jun 30, 2002 at 10:52:37AM -0700, Meg McRoberts wrote:
> >
> > I thought CR was "Roman" -- just normal variably-spaced
> > characters in whatever the prevailing typeset is, whereas
> > CW is monofont characters.  But I must admit that I've had
> > some problems with CW between troff and groff in the past...
>
> Font `R' is `Roman', the variably-spaced default font.
> `CR' is `Constant Roman'.

No. In devpost C stands for "fontfamily" Courier and R for "typeface"
Roman (as in plain, normal, or regular style).

> `CW' seems to be some anachronism.

CW is an abbreviation for Constant Width. It is an anachronism insofar
as that was the name used in the C/A/T phototypesetter for its version
of a monowidth font (that didn't have bold nor italics style
variations). Besides, if you check s.tmacs, you'll see that the original
CW macro does a bit more than just a plain typeface change. It is true
that CW aliases CR in devpost.

> A nice feature for `CW' would be to switch into the constant analogue
> of the actual font (e.g. I -> CI), but that does not exist so far.

Not true. It just doesn't exist in the devpost driver, not by design but
by configuration defaults. If you check devpost's DESC file, it only has
9 positions for font mounting (of 256), emulating as closely as possible
the
design and implementation decisions of otroff/ditroff (4 text slots plus
three special fonts I recall correctly). But it doesn't mean that you
can't load more fonts, just that you can't mount them by font position.

For a demonstration of a postprocessor that is configured to use CW,
CWI, and CWB, check devdvi's DESC file (13 font slots) as well as
dvi.tmac and ec.tmac. You can always add them as .ftr requests to your
macro package if needed.