Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Q: nroff character sizes
Message-ID: <1991Jun18.172533.15829@ico.isc.com>
Date: 18 Jun 91 17:25:33 GMT
References: <2133@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> <1991Jun13.200408.28043@cbnewsl.att.com>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 23

npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes about getting nroff to work
with printers having non-fixed-pitch fonts:
...
> Were the original poster to do the modifications to nroff
> he suggests, he'd get ragged right margins only, since
> nroff believes all characters are equal width and
> adjusts accordingly.

It depends on the version of nroff.  It's certainly true for the DWB 2.x
versions of nroff, and for very old nroff.  There were intermediate ver-
sion(s) of nroff for which the "terminal description" did contain widths
for every character.  This was apparently intended to allow for characters
which were multiples of the standard fixed width.  However, it was possible
with these nroffs to set the unit width to the printer increment, build up
the character widths in multiples of this unit, and have nroff work with
variable-width characters--*almost*.  There were some bugs that prevented
it from working completely.  One of them had to do with underlining (as I
recall, nroff assumed that the underline character had unit width) and I
don't recall the others...it's been too many years since I tried it, but I
recall the final result being "so close, yet so far."
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Simpler is better.