Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr!tektronix!psueea!parsely!sopwith!snoopy
From: snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: What features would you like in GNU troff?
Message-ID: <222@sopwith.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 89 20:01:07 GMT
References: <986@aber-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy)
Distribution: comp
Organization: The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm
Lines: 32

In article <986@aber-cs.UUCP> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
|In article <JJC.89May31220314@jclark.UUCP> jjc@jclark.UUCP (James Clark) writes:
|    I have been implementing a troff which I'm going to give to GNU, and I
|    would like to get some input on what features people would like to see
|    in it.
|    
|    It can produce both TeX .dvi and PostScript output, and uses TeX .tfm
|    font metric files.
|
|Please, oh please get out ditroff's di format instead of PostScript.

Please, oh please retain the existing PostScript mode.  Add di format if
you like, but don't drop PostScript.

| There is no reason to output PostScript directly,

Why not?  PostScript is a (mostly) device-independent page description
language that is very popular.  There is a GNU PostScript interpreter
(Ghostscript) which handled the sample of groff output James sent me
just fine, modulo font differences (I didn't have the fonts specified and
had to substitute Hershey fonts).  Groff generates PostScript code which
appears to be significently more efficient than that generated by Adobe's
psdit. (I haven't done benchmarks, but I think it's a safe guess.)


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