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Re: [Groff] Re: begin page blues


From: Peter Schaffter
Subject: Re: [Groff] Re: begin page blues
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 19:46:23 -0500
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.11

If I can just stick my two cents worth in...

On Tue, Feb 21, 2006, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> > Well, at least I've tried :-) I only have one philosophical
> > question-mark. When I was a youngster (yes!), device independence
> > and pre- and post-processors were good ideas and necessary.  I
> > wonder whether it still is the case.
> 
> For me: definitely yes.

I concur.

> > We, who got used to them, are comfortable with them.  I'm not so
> > sure about today's youngsters.
<snip>
> > And perhaps they would like a single application better, a groff
> > with built-in tbl, eqn, me or mm etc, producing, say, only ps.

This sounds very much like the idea that was fielded a while ago,
namely a WYSIWYG-style front-end that generated groff-formatted
source documents.  I'm not against the idea.  I use the lilypond
music typesetting system to engrave my scores, but I nearly always
start off with one of the graphical front ends to lily to generate
a file I can work with.  It's a tremendous time saver, being able
to see the general outlines of a score before diving into the
nitty-gritty.  I suspect groff would benefit from something like
this--a sort of LyX for groff.  And why not have the capability to
produce PostScript output as well, if that's what a user wants?

However, I noticed that the idea died.  Not sure if it was for lack
of interest, or lack of skills and time in the development
community.

> No chance.  Youngster don't use groff at all.  It's way too uncool,
> isn't it? :-)

Actually, I'm finding the opposite.  I've been asked to give a talk
about groff and the mom macro set to the Ottawa/Canada Linux Users
Group, which is composed mostly of "youngsters".  Conversely, I've
noticed that it's people in their forties and fifties, accustomed to
word processing, who think the whole text processing philosophy and
implementation isn't sufficiently cool for their tastes.

As I said, just my two-cents worth.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
  Author of _The Schumann Proof_ (RendezVous Press, Canada)
  http://faustus.dyn.ca




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