address@hidden: Re: [Groff] UTP ducoment translation, bloatware, and MS Offfice]

[Peter Schaffter]

Hi.

Richard makes some interesting points.  Not sure I agree with all of
them but this following one rings oh, so true in my case.

On Mon, Aug 26, 2002, Richard Loken wrote:
> I use troff because I can write what I want to write very quickly and I
> can make major modifications in style and/or format in a fraction of the
> time that a WYSIWYG word processor can do it.  My wife and my daughter write
> their university papers in troff, they write them fast and check them fast
> and life goes on.  All of this with a 75MHz Pentium and a Deskjet 500 and why
> not?  They both work just fine and I got them for free from some ugrading 
> Windows victem.

I'm not so sure about this next, though:

> Groff has strayed too far from the path.

To quote the introduction to cstr54:

    "Joe Ossanna's _troff_ remains a remarkable accomplishment.  For
    fifteen years, it has proven a robust tool, taking unbelievable
    abuse from a variety of preprocessors and being forced into uses
    that were never conceived of in the original design, all with
    considerable grace under fire."

    
Personally, from reading this list, I get the feeling groff is in a
period of transition again.  Many suggestions are made, but not all
are followed up.  Given the (occasionally heated) debates about what
could or should be added to groff, one might easily make the mistake
of thinking groff has "strayed from the path."  However, as a macro
developer, I couldn't be happier with the direction things have been
going over the past year or two.

Kudos, BTW, to Werner for his always sane assessment in judging what's
good for groff.  If there were an award for Best Maintainer in the GNU
project, I'd nominate him in a second.

-- 
PTPi
Peter Schaffter
31, Curé-André-Préseault
Appt. 22
Gatineau (Québec)
CANADA  J8T 6E4

A confirmed GNU/Linuxer. Sorry, I don't do Windows.

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
PTPi
Peter Schaffter
31, Curé-André-Préseault
Appt. 22
Gatineau (Québec)
CANADA  J8T 6E4

A confirmed GNU/Linuxer. Sorry, I don't do Windows.