Re: [Groff] \F request?

[Jon Snader]

On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 06:08:09PM +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> I would like to introduce the \F escape to select the font family,
> using the same syntax as the \f escape (no numbers, of course).  I
> think there are a lot of applications for it, not solvable with a
> request.
> 
> Unfortunately, I would then have to change the family name for
> Palatino to, say, `PA' to free the letter `P'.
> 
> Opinions?
> 

Hi Werner,

As usual, I have to express my strong disapproval of non-backwards
compatible changes.  My book and those of others (Rich Stevens, e.g.)
use the Palatino font.  Granted, this particular case does not impose
a huge burdon on me (and probably not the others), but I am against
*any* change to breaks existing behavior unless there are compelling
reasons to do so.

It's hard for me to see any uses for the proposed change that a *user*
would care about.  Although I am not in the business of writing or
maintaining complete macro packages I do have an extensive set of custom
macros that I wrote and use.  Even from that perspective, I can't think
of a situation where I would have liked to have the proposed feature.

I'm sure that you *can* think of those uses, and that they might be
useful for macro writers, but at the end of the day, groff is really
only useful to its *users*, and we should respect their needs foremost.

Since I only seem to write to disagree with one of your proposals, let
me say again how much I appreciate the work that you and the other
developers are doing.  The proof of your good work and ideas is that I
don't write more often.

Jon Snader