Re: GNU groff in articles

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2023-11-21T12:02:20+0300, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Jim Hall:
> 
> > Several weeks ago, I interviewed Dr. Marshall Kirk
> > McKusick about how he writes his books using groff:
> > https://technicallywewrite.com/2023/10/13/groffbooks
> 
> McKusick  writes  about  orphan elimination, end-of-
> line tweaking,  and  balancing  of  text  on  facing
> pages.   Does  that  mean he wrote an exptermal tool
> that looks for those defects and runs *roff in  sev-
> eral passes to eliminate them?  It seems in possible
> in a single *roff invocation...

I think it's possible he simply fixed these issues manually.  I engage
is such a process to avoid stranded with lines by using what I call
"poor man's keeps" in groff's man pages.

But this is just a guess; if you (or anyone else) would like to reach
out and ask him, I'd love to know the answer.

I'm personally delighted with Jim's recent interviews because they
confirm that Kernighan and McKusick are both groff users.  I seem to
remember people on the TUHS mailing list expressing skepticism that
luminaries like these stooped to the usage of GNU troff, instead
preferring the completely satisfactory (if utterly unmaintained) AT&T
troffs of the 1980s and 1990s.

Regards,
Branden

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