RE: [Groff] #ifdef WIDOW_CONTROL???

[Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 address@hidden wrote:

> On 30-Aug-01 Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab wrote:

...

> > The reason for that is that I, as a newbie UNIX user failed to install
> > TeX on my Decstation. I just couldn't get all paths and environmental
> > variables right. Groff compiled and installed, and it was just to start
> > writing papers, and that was what I was payed for at the time. Enough
> > about me and my relation to groff.
> 
> Welcome to the groff list!

Thanks :)

> (especially so from someone whose relatinship with groff is much like
> yours, though I'd been using Unix troff since some years earlier, and
> started using groff on DOS around 1991; so to a large extent the advent
> of TeX passed me by). Anyway, we hope you will benefit from being with
> us. 

What I wanted to say is that I use groff more or less since I got started
with it at some early stage, not because I seriously thought very much
about it.

Nowadays I have TeX as well as Lout on my workstation. After all, we get
them without effort with any Linu/BSD xdistribution. I only use groff for
my own musings. TeX is for printing texinfo and sheet music, and stuff by
others

TeX is heavy. Small is beautiful. And I'm grateful that people care for
this nice (and fundamentally important) piece of software. My only
contribution to the groff community is the gpic driver for gnuplot. I've
always been curious if that one is used by someone.

[... about WIDOW_CONTROL and COLUMN ...]
 
> 
> I suspect that these were ideas that James Clark intended to develop,
> but did not complete by the time he decided to move away from groff.
> As a result, this code may produce unwanted effects -- a possible
> reason for "#ifdef"fing them out.

Methinks they look like vertical galleys (like in Lout).

 
Cheers

Sigfrid