Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1a 7/7/83; site rlgvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!rlgvax!guy From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: Broff and a proposed net project Message-ID: <852@rlgvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 19-Jul-83 11:55:50 EDT Article-I.D.: rlgvax.852 Posted: Tue Jul 19 11:55:50 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 20-Jul-83 07:50:56 EDT References: <3123@arizona.UUCP>, <5276@mcvax.UUCP> Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA Lines: 33 What is really needed is a new approach with new concepts for text processing. I don't think that a text processing in a programming language flavour is a solution. This will be just a tool made by programmers for programmers. It would certainly not help our typist pool. To have things done more interactively would be a better idea. Amen. Admittedly, I'm prejudiced, having written most of an interactive editor-formatter (i.e., a word processor) that runs under UNIX, but I find that it's a lot nicer to work with that nroff/troff. For one thing, there's a lot less of the "edit-nroff-correct-nroff again-..." cycle. For some applications, like producing a book, a post-processor might be better (although I don't know that it is); but even there, it's possible to do a lot better than nroff/troff - for example, Knuth's TeX seems more powerful and seems to have a less baroque and difficult language. Our main use for nroff/troff here is with documents that have already been written using it, and for UNIX manual pages. "broff" would be useful for programmers and other people working at shops which make heavy use of "nroff" and don't want to convert to something new, however. By the way, if you are continuing this project, keep the hyphenation algorithm as clean as it is now. It's now trivial to put a different algorithm in, f.i. for Dutch. You might want to post something about how to do this, in case other people have the same requirements. If you know how the ".ht" (Hyphenation Threshhold) request works (from what I can see, there's some value assigned to each digram, and only digrams with values at or above the threshhold are hyphenated), you might post that too... Guy Harris {seismo,mcnc,we13,brl-bmd,allegra}!rlgvax!guy