Re: [Groff] Mission statement, second draft

[Erich Hoffmann]

Am Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:44:21 -0400
schrieb Peter Schaffter <address@hidden>:

> Here's the second draft of the mission statement, incorporating
> suggestions from Ingo, Eric, Pierre-Jean, and others.  It's starting
> to come into focus, although a third pass will probably be necessary
> before we commit to it.

Up to now I could not contribute to this discussion, because I am
a mere user.  I'm using groff (mostly modified ms macros) and am
following this group for many years by now.  You see me rarely in
this group because I am fully satisfied and found a solution to every
typesetting problem, *but* ONE.  Still groffing.

[...]
> GROFF MISSION STATEMENT, 2014, 2nd draft
[...]
> Future groff development will focus on these areas:
[...]
> Backend
> 
> The biggest challenge facing groff is the implementation of
> paragraph-at-once formatting based on the Knuth-Plass algorithm.
> Already present in Heirloom troff, this is a high-priority next step
> in groff's evolution, along with the addition of typesetting
> features modelled after Heirloom troff.
[...]
> Equally important for groff's future will be instituting native
> support for TrueType, OpenType, and other non-Type1 (PostScript)
> fonts, as well as improving Unicode support.

Here is my problem.  I have to (i.e. "want to") typeset chinese texts.
With the invaluable help from Werner Lemberg I could transform a TeX
chinese font into a groff font format - but as no paragraph management
for this font is available, I had to switch to LaTeX and XeTeX.

   If TrueType etc. fonts had a native support and paragraph management of
paragraphs in CJK fonts were possible, all my problems were solved. I
got the impression that at least for advanced users groff and TeX are
more or less equal.  A good friend of mine uses plain TeX and LaTeX
because he has to use Lilypond, and I can understand his position that
he just wants to use 1 typesetting environment.  Apart from these and
other special issues the difference may be a question of taste.  Mine is
with the elegance of the groff markup, but, really, I don't see sense in
"groff-versus-TeX-wars". 

   In this group is a very high level of expertise.  As a mere user
who wants "that it just works", from a practical point of view,
I am preferring groff wherever possible.  Not because the TeX family is
bad.

   OK I could totally forget the whole WYSIWYG clan, and deeply regret
every time I have to use that stuff at work.  For that purpose, it
could be a nice idea if groff could support rtf, otf, epub output.
(And a vice-versa-conversion.) But it will always be beyond my means
to write a thing like that.

   But perhaps you'll like to see that even a completely non-programmer
like me still is using groff.

> Finally, it is hoped that users of and contributors to groff will
> promote its use, providing unobtrusive advocacy to encourage more
> widespread adoption of the program, thereby increasing the pool of
> potential contributors and developers.

This I'd like to do wherever I can, but the people I know live in the
windows world.  WORD...WYSIWYG...nice colored buttons...light, joyful
and fine beginning, and eventually nothing but anger and desperation...

   The other day, I worked with a colleage and showed her the advantages
of a plain text editor driven typesetting system.  Like groff, TeX,
plain text for emails, or lout for that matter.  She was amazed how
efficient, simple, nonobtrusive such a system can be, because of the
(this discussion mentioned that several times) Unix philosophy of
chaining simple tools together.  A good text editor and an efficient
typesetting program instead of "do everything in one place".  Alas poor
Yorick.  At work, she *has* to use Word.

   You realize the level on which I'm thinking.  Wherever I can, I spare
time, work, and nerves using things like groff.  So I'd be glad if
that will live on.  Again, the support of epub, rtf, otf would be
*very* nice, but, I fear, support of Unicode, TrueTypefonts and the
corresponding paragraph management, might be mandatory. 

Cheers, and thanks for the many informative posts in this group,

Erich