Re: [Groff] Overview, Sept. 2014

[Bertrand Garrigues]

Hi Peter,

On Tue, Sep 09 2014 at 11:31:38 PM, Peter Schaffter <address@hidden> wrote:
> The thread on underlining raised a couple of issues.  One is whether
> a long-established request (.ul) should be updated.  The rationale
> is that it's unlikely anyone in 2014+ needs (or, if young enough,
> even understands) the current behaviour.
[...]
> Out of that discussion came Doug's excellent suggestion for a new
> primitive, '.decor' or similarly named
[...]
> Problem is, the thread died, and nothing came of it.  I suspect that's
> in part because we're all leery of mucking about in the sources.  It
> may also point to a dearth of skilled C++ coders on the list, which,
> if true, is something we're going to have to address.

I would not be afraid to dive into the source code. Although my main
language is C, not C++, groff's C++ code seems quite understandable for
a C programmer, as it was already said in the list. The problem is that
I didn't feel I had sufficient general knowledge on groff to
participate to the conversation, and other newcomers probably feel the
same. I'm not that young but yes, I don't even understand the current
behaviour of .ul !

> On a similar note, Ulrich Lautner stepped forward to take on
> implementing a modified version of Knuth-Plass.  He produced a
> prototype showing that the application of dynamic programming to
> paragraph formatting can be done with a relatively small piece of code
> and at high speed.  I was excited, but interest from others hovered
> around zero.  I'm not sure why: from previous discussions, revamping
> groff's paragraph formatting is a priority.  If Ulrich is to pursue
> this (provided he's still interested, and I, for one, sincerely hope
> he is), he needs assistance from the list.

I didn't comment for the same reasons, but the subject is very
interesting. Once I've finished the automake migration, I'll try to have
a look to this topic. Or if someone takes starts implementing the
modified Knuth-Plass first I'll be happy to spend some time on tests and
debug.

Regards,

--
Bertrand Garrigues