Re: Lout *not* dead!

[slomium]

Greetings!

I still use Lout regularly to maintain documentation for our script library and a couple of ~ 200 page manuals.  Since I have to maintain documentation for several customers, I've written Lout functions that allow me to compile six different manual versions based on the settings of a couple flags in my Lout source.  I do all my work with a slightly customized version of Lout under Cygwin.  I've toyed with the idea of becoming a Lout package maintainer for Cygwin just so it's easier for people to get and use in Windows environments.

I think, regardless of the size of the Lout community, it would be nice to have a well-organized spot to easily make user contributions.  By user contributions I mean everything from ideas on how to use Lout (e.g. what can be done with @Filter), supplementary tools (e.g. Martin's font tools), editing modes, Lout definitions, bug fixes, etc.  It's been some time since i've looked at what's out there so please don't take this as criticism -- it's just food for thought.  I expect to be using Lout for many years to come so I want to make the most of what we have.

I wonder what Jeff's thoughts are on things -- it's been some time since we've heard from him.

-David

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 5:02 AM, Mark Carroll <address@hidden> wrote:

Matěj Cepl <address@hidden> writes:

> On 11/10/15 03:44, Daren Scot Wilson wrote:
>> Lout is certainly not dead for me.
>
> OK, it is not dead (like punk), it is just pinning for the fjords. I am
> glad I have excited so many (all?) users of it to make themselves known.

I generally think of Lout as being in maintenance mode: no new features
but I would hope that Jeff may still help to fix bugs. Personally I love
how generally easy it is to figure out how to have Lout do what I want,
partly because what I want tends to coincide with what it would do
anyway. For instance, while I certainly appreciate TikZ, I've not yet
had a Lout diagram that made me wish I were using LaTeX instead.

I /do/ worry that Nonpareil is dead though. At the least, I hope that
the basic "lessons learned" from all this is written up somewhere -- at
least as a conceptual overview capturing the approach -- so that if
there is someday some successor, it is as good as Lout or as Nonpareil
would have been.

-- Mark