Re: [Groff] funding for groff hacking?

[Larry Kollar]

> One thing I would like to see is the original AT&T docs brought into
> alignment with the current groff.  I think it is an embarrassment that
> the groff docs aren't in roff, that's like using CVS to store the 
> sources
> to Subversion, it doesn't say much for our faith in groff.

I've been threatening to take a crack at that myself. The old texi2roff 
utility can do some of the work, although for a manual the size of the 
groff doc, the results were rather ugly. Some of the PDF 
extraction/reformatting scripts I've written for other projects might 
be more useful here.

> Once we have the docs back the next thing is to integrate into the 
> original
> docs all of the old and new groff extensions.  I think groff is much
> under appreciated.

Are you saying, incorporate the AT&T docs into the GNU-troff manual 
where we don't have text written already? Or am I missing something?

One thing I'm trying to track down & document is whether there are Free 
replacements for each of the 80 or so utilities making up the old DWB, 
either drop-in or "close enough." Some of the utilities are more or 
less obsolete or unnecessary nowadays, but it would be nice to have a 
list showing everything useful is available.

> Another thing I'd like to see is widows/orphans processing, it is so 
> annoying
> to have to do that by hand.

That might already be done or do-able.... See
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2004-03/msg00124.html
The patch I mentioned in the referenced message was added to the source 
tree IIRC. Some macro hacking might be required to completely implement 
the feature.
--
Larry Kollar     k  o  l  l  a  r  @  a  l  l  t  e  l  .  n  e  t
Unix Text Processing: "UTP Revival"
http://home.alltel.net/kollar/utp/