Re: [Groff] Hey, our headman is in the news!

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > Mainly that data put into a diversion can't be completely
> > `unformatted'.  I don't feel too well in manipulating already
> > formatted data...
> 
> Oh, no, I wasn't thinking of unformatting the content of the
> diversion.  I was thinking of having embedded vertical spacing
> macros in the diversion, which could be adjusted so that when the
> diversion was finally replayed onto the page, a properly aligned
> bottom margin would result.  (See my tmac.diss at
> www.usm.uni-muenchen.de/people/hoffmann/roff.)

Yes, this looks promising.

> I believe TeX uses a similar concept (i.e., storing ready-formatted
> text), only they call it "boxes", not "diversions", and TeX has an
> optimizer to decide where to pagebreak, not just a simple
> vertical-position trap.

Well, in TeX I can always `\unhbox' or `\unvbox' a box to get back the
original contents, unmodified.


    Werner