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Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in
From: |
Ingo Schwarze |
Subject: |
Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?) |
Date: |
Wed, 5 Aug 2020 16:05:35 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.12.2 (2019-09-21) |
Hi,
Dave Kemper wrote on Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 08:17:25PM -0500:
> On 7/31/20, Peter Schaffter <peter@schaffter.ca> wrote:
>> Several years ago, I fielded the idea that, instead of chasing after
>> the Grail of paragraph-at-once, groff's line-formatting algorithm be
>> improved instead. I worked on systems that used the formatting
>> strategy I proposed
>>
>> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2014-03/msg00322.html
>>
>> and can confirm that it significantly reduced the amount of
>> intervention required to achieve good grey on a line-by-line basis.
>> There wasn't much interest in the proposal back then--I felt a bit
>> like a voice crying in the wilderness--but maybe it's time to try
>> crying again?
> I wonder if it's less a lack of interest and more a recognition that
> we have a shortage of people with the willingness and expertise to
> make any substantive changes to the groff code. I, and I'm sure
> others, welcome any improvements to typographic output, but it's hard
> to get excited over ideas -- even good ideas -- if no one plans to
> turn them into working code. That situation hasn't changed much since
> 2014.
Exactly. When you post an idea and five people reply with ten
arguments why it is unlikely to work, it was often a bad idea.
But if you get no reply, it may still be an excellent idea.
For example, i often drop out of discussions, even interesting
discussions, when i don't plan to do the work, or even don't join
them in the first place in that case.
Yours,
Ingo