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From: rick@pcrat.uucp (Rick Richardson)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: What features would you like in GNU troff?
Message-ID: <1989Aug6.144135.11520@pcrat.uucp>
Date: 6 Aug 89 14:41:35 GMT
References: <779@pcrat.UUCP> <355@wjh12.harvard.edu> <8388@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <159@unmvax.unm.edu> <1989Aug3.193322.24941@algor2.uu.net> <8881@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> <9746@alice.UUCP>
Reply-To: rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson)
Distribution: comp
Organization: PC Research, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ
Lines: 42

In article <9746@alice.UUCP> debra@alice.UUCP () writes:
>In article <8881@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> wnp@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Wolf Paul) writes:
>}Therefore, it seems that DVI compatiblility would best be provided by
>}a post processor which takes ditroff(5) output and produces DVI output.
>
>I fully agree that GNUtroff should be fully compatible with ditroff as
>far as input is concerned and the output it produces on paper.
>This does *not* imply that it couldn't use a different intermediate
>output language than ditroff.

There is an automatic indexing package around that uses the ditroff
intermediate language to pick out the words and the page numbers they
appear on.  There are also a whole slew of non-standard thingies that
appear in troff *input*, by virtue of transparent pass-thru, that are
used to drive the troff postprocessors to do things that cannot be
expressed in the input language, such as bitmaps and shading.
These are a couple of good reasons to keep ditroff intermediate output
around as an option in groff.

On the other hand, TeX has much better font metric information
available, and I'm sure that groff will take advantage of this.
The postprocessors also need to know some of this information
as well.  As it happens, JetRoff already has some knowledge of
TeX style font metric information, since it uses "pk" format
font files.

The groff author has choosen to limit his efforts to Postscript
and DVI.  A reasonable limitation for a package that you get
for free unless someone is selling it bundled with support.

Nevertheless,  I'm sure that after the initial release of groff,
some kind soul will add ditroff output format.  I've made the
offer to take a look at the problem, implement it as time is
available, and donate it back to GNU.  I haven't heard any
reply, and I apparently wasn't choosen as an alpha site.

-Rick
-- 
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