Re: [Groff] Suggested tbl enhancement

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > Hmm, can you post a TODO, please?
>
> 1 HTML support (would probably require changes to the groff wrapper
> to pass a command-line option to tbl for -Thtml)

It seems that the hdtbl macros are much easier to adapt to generate
proper HTML.  BTW, I've checked them in (in contrib/hdtbl), but they
are not ready yet.

> 2) Global point size option

hdtbl supports this.

> 3) Rotate option for -Tps (a built-in version of
>    http://www.port.de/cgi-bin/groff/RotateTables more or less)

Hmm.

> 4) Conditional global options and formats - if you're using the same
> info in a different document, for example

Since hdtbl is a solution completely done with groff macros, this
should be feasible.

BTW, hdtbl supports nested tables, something not possible with tbl.
As you can see, I'm quite excited about hdtbl, and I'll invest a lot
of time in the next days to integrate it into the groff framework.

> > I'm going to include this soon (after I've released a new FreeType
> > version).
>
> Hmmmm.... looks like two of those pesky TrueType hinting patents are
> going to expire on Monday.

I don't think so.  According to 

  http://www.ssjr.com/tools/toolshell.aspx

using the dates as shown here:

  http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05155805__

this particular patent expires on 13-Oct-2009.

> Is that the reason for the new version?

No.  A lot of internal things have changed, and many security issues
have been fixed.


    Werner