[Groff] Re: What's missing for Unicode support of groff?

[Michail Vidiassov]

Dear Werner,

On Fri, 2 Dec 2005, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> > 3. Some other bugs:
> >
> > afmtodit needs a patch, since we do not encode variant glyphs with
> > ps names smth.smth, but they may be present in kerning tables.
>
> I can find a patch in your unicodetest bundle.  Do you mean this one?
Yes

> > grops(1) tells
> >    A downloadable font should not include its own name in a
> >    %%DocumentSuppliedResources comment.
> > But the FreeEuro font does not follow this convention.
>
> Can you provide a patch?
No. I am not thinking in PostSript, I do not understand
what this requirement is for in the first place.
Just noted a contradiction between docs and code in freeeuro.pfa.

> > PS. Have you started to work on real Unicode input?
>
> No, sorry.  Still a lot of other things to do (and, admittedly, not
> *that* much interest currently to start with this work).  As usual,
> volunteers welcome.

I see no ways to motivate you to move to version 2.0 ;)

But, as a workaround, why not to integrate into groff
code from uni2groff and activate it on an option -mutf8
(like -mlatin1, -mlatin2, etc)?
Using an external preprocessor like uni2groff is an inferior
solution, since it requires modification of the groff
toolchain. But it is still a way to go.
If you document the steps to setup groff to deal
with UTF in a whatsnew for 1.9.3 IN LARGE FRIENDLY LETTERS.
It requires you to make some choice of unicode fonts
to use by default.

I think it will suit the needs of some distros moving to
UTF-only environment form latin? setup, since the mainteiners
will have to just change one command-line option.

The genaral idea - the UNICODE support in groff does not
need to be proper (nobody want it hard enough).
What is necessary is just enabling the conversion of existign roff
formated texts to UTF, what means latin and cyrillic.

Groff will be like Tex - 8 bit core (stable and covenient like stone axe)
with an ugly UTF hack on top of it ;)
The same lack of collation support, BTW.

           Sincerely, Michail
PS. what about groff and metapost issue?