Re: [Groff] Suggestion for images in groff/gpic, current state

[Werner LEMBERG]

> As promised, I've continued to work on the suggestion for
> implementation of images in groff.  I've tried to digest the
> impressions of our earlier discussions, and the proposal attempts to
> take these into account.  I've also tried to maintain the 'troff
> feel' as much as possible, which, for one, should make the new
> features easy to use.
>
> The current status is reflected in this document:
>
>       ftp://ftp.kvaleberg.com/pub/image.ps

Very nice!  Some comments:

. You've convinced me that images should get an own escape.

. The arguments to .image and \i should be changed to the following
  IMHO:

    .image file [width [height [xoffset [yoffset]]]]

  This is two arguments less, and it fits better the idea of using
  zero for padding arguments.

. I'm not happy with the name of the `query' request.  For me this is
  too general.  What about `imageinfo'?  The same for the used
  registers.  Note that \n[.color] is already in use, returning 1 if
  colour support is active.

  Here my proposal, in analogy to the registers of \w:

    \n[imaget]
    \n[imageb]

  These two registers should be r/w, so starting the names with a dot
  is probably not optimal.  They also use the yoffset value.

    \n[.iformat] or \n[.imageformat]      or \n[.imagef]
    \n[.icolor]  or \n[.imagecolorscheme] or \n[.imagecs]

  I don't see an immediate need to have registers returning the
  natural height and width -- a call to `.image file' does the same.
  This is implies internal caching of the information of the last
  image (or images) to get reasonable speed.

  As you can see, I've dropped the width registers since you can get
  the info with \w.

. There is no \n[.w] register, and I'm not sure that \n[.cdp] and
  \n[.cht] are really appropriate for \i.  Images are not
  characters...

. Having a \n[.image] register is probably too much.  Testing for
  groff version 1.19 using the .x, .y, and .Y registers should do the
  same.


    Werner