Re: various problems

[Thomas Steffen]

>>>>> "Valeriy" == Valeriy E Ushakov <address@hidden> writes:

    Valeriy> Lout in their projects and this difficulties stem from
    Valeriy> the fact that learning Lout (as it is) is difficult.

i have been using lout for one project only, and a few minor files
plus a new letter head style. my opinion is that lout is *much* easier
than tex/latex, in just about every way. the expert guide is
brilliant, the only thing needed is a short reference card with 

a) all the distances
b) all low level commands
c) high level commands
d) meta commands
e) typical problems/style guide

if others feel like me, i might even do it.

    Valeriy> The best thing we, as a Lout community, can do to make
    Valeriy> Lout more successful (and we want it to be more
    Valeriy> widespread, more available, used in more projects, aren't
    Valeriy> we?) is to allow Jeff to concentrate on the implemenation
    Valeriy> and take the task of spreading the Lout gospel.

agree. i am not sure whether the problem has been discussed: if i use
logical document structure (sections & subsections), memory
consumption goes through the ceiling (50 MB+). this basically makes it
unusable for me (linux 2.0, P100, 32 MB, lout 3.10).

    Valeriy> Yes, but galleys are used more heavily so every effort
    Valeriy> should be made to document them and their usage in great
    Valeriy> detail.

actually i thing the explanation of galleys is very useful, all it
need is some time to read it carefully. and galleys seem to be a near
ideal solution for the problem.

    >> I'd love to hear some suggestions in this area, or pointers to
    >> systems that are much easier to configure than Lout is. I feel
    >> myself that some kind of even more modular design would be
    >> good, but I don't know what.

configuring tex is a nightmare. britle command, no syntax at all,
files all over the place, unix scripts, c code, floating point
emulation in latex code, sever limitations in a lot of fields... 

i don't think that a serious text processing system can be a turn-key
solution. it is powerful *because* you can configure it.

    Valeriy> One thing that may be worth doing is separating page
    Valeriy> layout from displays, lists and other higher-level stuff.
    Valeriy> Then people can reuse page code easier. May be it's worth
    Valeriy> to take a look at the specification of page-sequence and
    Valeriy> column-set-sequence DSSSL flow object classess, it
    Valeriy> *might* suggest some ideas on what set of features the
    Valeriy> page layout code might provide.

agree. from the user point of view: they want to add one command to
change the borders. right now they have to dig out the system files,
copy it, go through it and modify in the right place. change the
includes... 

one more problem: the HP3LJ here with postscript module 1987 (argh, i
know) doesn't like lout output (nor does it like recent adobe output,
ok). Nr 18 postscript error is all it says, i assume a stack overflow.
any way to get round that? i does not happen with every pages, but
quite often. and yes, i have told them at least once a day that that
printer is a pile of shit by modern standards.

                        Thomas
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