Re: [Groff] bug in GNU troff?

[Jon Snader]

On Sun, Jan 21, 2001 at 10:56:37PM +0000, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> 
> True, but there seems to me to be a difference between *extending*
> groff with long names, although incompatible with troff's parsing in a
> few cases, and re-defining the meaning on a tab in the input.  I agree,
> it is a question of judgement, but changing the meaning of tab on input
> just seems a step too far.
> 
> Given that, when explicitly questioned on this, Ossanna insisted on the
> behaviour to his colleagues, who were heavy troff users and top brass
> to boot, I think we should accept his argument of why it was the Right
> Thing for troff.
> 
> Compatibility mode is too coarse a granularity.  If on then long names
> are sorely lacking.  A set of compatibility flags to control each group
> of extensions might help.
> 
> > I don't want to be a guard of a museum.
> 
> I sympathise;  the nights are quiet here at the A&V.  But there is
> something to be said of keeping *troff* alive and well and useful in a
> modern environment.  Does TeX suffer from being a museum?  Am I right
> in thinking Knuth has fixed its definition and therefore freedom to
> tweak and twiddle is limited?  Troff's definition is pretty fixed too,
> and wandering away from it might be unwise.
> 

I agree.  As a long time user who has typeset many papers and a book
with Troff, I would like to follow Ralph's paradigm of *extending*
Troff without doing violence to its underlying semantics.

Jon Snader
``Effective TCP/IP Programming''
http://www.netcom.com/~jsnader