Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!brainerd
From: brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: What features would you like in GNU troff?
Summary: Here are some.
Message-ID: <159@unmvax.unm.edu>
Date: 17 Jun 89 21:19:54 GMT
References: <779@pcrat.UUCP> <355@wjh12.harvard.edu> <8388@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of New Mexico at Albuquerque
Lines: 38

I thought I would be able to refrain from commenting on this, but guess I can't!

It bothers me that someone is going to spend a year or two creating something
that may not be as good as what is available now.  Yes, I know the answer is
that we should give away our version, but even that can't be done because
the basic code belongs to AT&T.  It is a very complex program, as we all
know, and the chances of being compatible with AT&T troff after writing
the program from scratch is very small, in my opinion.

Anyway, to find out what stuff to put in, simply look at the extant versions.
Softquad's sroff and our profficient probably have the most additional
"features".  I don't know who made the original posting, but would be
glad to send a description of our features on request.  In the meantime,
here is a brief summary.  In my use to typeset technical books, I find
the first five by far the most important.  By the way, in the long name
business, it is the availability of arbitrarily many names and
the ability to alias, remove, and rename that is really important.
For example, it's really nice to have an unlimited number of environments.

Upward compatibility with "standard" troff source.
Compatibility with "standard" ditroff output (so device drivers work)
Dictionary-driven hyphenation (as an option)
Long names for requests, macros, registers, environments, and fonts
   and the ability to rename, alias, and remove these objects.
Diagnostic messages when you do something stupid

Testing if an object (e.g., macro or string) is defined.
Tracing
Improved line drawing to take advantage of the capbilities of
   typesetters and laser printers
If/else.if/else/end.if construct
While construct
Shifting and concatenation of macro arguments
Saving and restoring tab stops

A feature we have not implemented, but think desirable is font families,
so that switching to _italic_ means italic of the current font family,
for example.