Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi,

Dave Kemper wrote on Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 08:17:25PM -0500:
> On 7/31/20, Peter Schaffter <peter@schaffter.ca> wrote:

>> Several years ago, I fielded the idea that, instead of chasing after
>> the Grail of paragraph-at-once, groff's line-formatting algorithm be
>> improved instead.  I worked on systems that used the formatting
>> strategy I proposed
>>
>>   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2014-03/msg00322.html
>>
>> and can confirm that it significantly reduced the amount of
>> intervention required to achieve good grey on a line-by-line basis.
>> There wasn't much interest in the proposal back then--I felt a bit
>> like a voice crying in the wilderness--but maybe it's time to try
>> crying again?

> I wonder if it's less a lack of interest and more a recognition that
> we have a shortage of people with the willingness and expertise to
> make any substantive changes to the groff code.  I, and I'm sure
> others, welcome any improvements to typographic output, but it's hard
> to get excited over ideas -- even good ideas -- if no one plans to
> turn them into working code.  That situation hasn't changed much since
> 2014.

Exactly.  When you post an idea and five people reply with ten
arguments why it is unlikely to work, it was often a bad idea.
But if you get no reply, it may still be an excellent idea.

For example, i often drop out of discussions, even interesting
discussions, when i don't plan to do the work, or even don't join
them in the first place in that case.

Yours,
  Ingo