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From: | Larry Kollar |
Subject: | Re: [Groff] gtroff & soelim don't recognize ~ in paths |
Date: | Tue, 11 Apr 2006 08:52:41 -0400 |
Tadziu Hoffmann wrote:
**] And remember there is one fundamental design difference between groff and TeX: TeX has exactly *one* "device" (in groff parlance), and we expect exactly the same output in all implementations. Groff has never had that aim. On the contrary, output is explicitly device dependent (let's say "device optimized"). Why not generalize this and allow differences even for the same device on different installations? If you want people to see exactly what you have, send the the finished, formatted output (text, PS, PCL, whatever). If you send them the source, expect them to edit it and get different results anyway.
IMO, this is precisely why groff works so well even today -- the designer's dream of getting exactly the same output on different devices [in the groff sense, not two PostScript printers] is a chimera that has led to all sorts of problems for technical writers who often *have* to publish the same documents as (usually) PDF and HTML. I like that phrase, "device optimized" -- it recognizes that different publishing media work differently.
-- Larry Kollar k o l l a r @ a l l t e l . n e t Unix Text Processing: "UTP Revival" http://unixtext.org/
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