Re: [Groff] groff as a backend

[Peter Schaffter]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2004, Larry McVoy wrote:
> I think one thing that is missing is a WYSIWIG system which spits out 
> roff on the back end.  

I'm no fan of WYSIWYG except for really complex page layout, but
I can certainly see the usefulness of this for people migrating to
*nix-like OSes from Windows and Mac.  Also, as I've discovered,
engraving music using GNU Lilypond, there are times when doing
initial work WYSIWYG-style, then refining by editing the output
file, is a tremendous timesaver.

> Another problem is that the design of the roff suite of tools is a series
> of filters.  I.e., pic | eqn | tbl | groff.  The problem with that is that
> the earlier stages of the pipeline don't have enough knowledge of the state
> of the doc when they are called.

Got to admit, that bugs me, too.

> Another problem is that roff is single pass.  This makes widow and orphan
> processing pretty much impossible.  It also makes things like table of 
> contents be something you have to do outside the system.  

Not sure why you think TOCs have to be done outside the system.
The mom macros, for example, generate TOCs from the source file.
Unless it's that you don't like manually inserting a TOC from the
end of a stack of output pages into the top of the pile, or using a
PostScript utility to do the same thing. 

> Finally, there is the whole problem of "glitzy".  We need good image and 
> color support.  Lots of docs want this.

Am I missing something?  I've been using a combination of groff,
the mom macros and PSPIC to create colourful, glitzy posters and
flyers for quite some time now.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
  Author of _The Schumann Proof_ (RendezVous Press, Canada)
  http://www.golden.net/~ptpi/theschumannproof.html