Re: [Groff] [off] micro-typography

[ralph]

Hi Thomas,

> On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 11:28:45AM +0100, Sigfrid Lundberg, NetLab wrote:
> > Wouldn't it help to have an extension language, like having GUILE
> > (GNU's Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extension) or PERL
> > compiled into troff and the ability to such things in a proper
> > programming language?
> 
> Yes, I think it would be a great idea, and in the good unix mind (a
> tool calling another tool and waiting for the result),

This `Software Tools' approach, typical of Unix, has each program doing
one thing well with them all working together thanks to pipes and a
common file format, i.e. textual lines.  You can already do this with
groff, e.g. kick off eqn from within troff and read its output as
opposed to using it as a preprocessor.

> but with a few conditions: the integration should be real (not only a
> system call)

And embedding an interpreter is not the Unix way.

I'm not arguing for or against embedding, e.g. Python, in troff at the
moment, I'm just pointing out that it isn't the `good unix mind' that's
being suggested.

Cheers,


Ralph.