Re: the next version of Lout

[Mark Summerfield]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:54:24 +1100
Jeff Kingston <address@hidden> wrote:
> It's time to start thinking about updating Lout from 3.39 to 3.40.
> 
> Several Lout users have made major contributions over the years,
> but they have always had to send them to me, and I have always
> reviewed them carefully and, as it were, made them my own before
> incorporating them.  I would like to make this the first truly
> collaborative update of Lout, starting from the 3.39 version
> held on the Savannah web site and doing the updates through that
> site.  This would change Lout into a thing that was maintained
> directly by interested people generally, rather than by me.
> 
> What do people think about this?

Personally, I like the current approach and like the fact that any
changes I do or propose go through you. But, of course, there are people
with sufficient skill to work directly on lout, so it will be nice that
they will have the opportunity to do so.
(And who knows, maybe someone will make lout work with UTF-8 and
TrueType fonts;-)

[snip]

> Everything else needing work that has accumulated since 3.39
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 11/20/2010 Mark Summerfield sent me an updated prg2lout.c.
> 12/02/2010 Request for @Foreword; it comes before @Preface.
> 12/08/2010 @CrossLink problem?
> 12/13/2010 Problem parsing Perl
> 01/12/2011 Patch to allow References section to start on a new page
> 01/11/2011 Patches for including and scaling image files (too major?)

> 02/10/2011 Suggestions re vertical gaps around figures etc. (too
> hard?)
I've worked around the problems by using

    @Floater
        @Location{...}
    @Figure
        @Location{Raw}
        ...

for every @Figure and @Table.

> 07/08/2011 Increase z06.c MAX_STACK to 250
This one is essential for me!

> 07/11/2011 Reverse paragraph order in whatsnew file
> 10/21/2011 Bug report from self
> 12/07/2011 Documentation bug (already fixed?)
> 12/08/2011 @Place defined in wrong package, needs moving to bsf
> 12/24/2011 Patch for coloured edges in Diag
> 12/24/2011 Patch related to ligatures (why needed?)

> 01/09/2012 Suggestion for a @PageMark on every page (why needed?)
This would allow people to use external indexing software to store terms
in the form:

    Term, 1, 2-10

and then use some conversion into lout:

    @BypassRawIndex indent{0f}{Term @PageOf{page.one},
        @address@hidden
etc.


-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd, www.qtrac.eu
    C++, Python, Qt, PyQt - training and consultancy
        "Advanced Qt Programming" - ISBN 0321635906
            http://www.qtrac.eu/aqpbook.html