Re: [groff] Now online: gropdf / grops previewer

[John Gardner]

Thanks for the kind words! =)

> this previewer is only a part of the online troff
> editor you are working on isn't it?

Ah no, it's not an online, interactive version of Troff, if that's what
you're thinking. =)

It's an extension for a text editor named Atom <https://atom.io/>, which is
like Emacs or Vim except graphical. Atom runs on a framework called Electron
<http://electron.atom.io/>, which uses web technologies (HTML/CSS/JS) for
creating desktop applications. This foundation is what's enabled me to
share my work as an online previewer. But the full experience can't be
ported to the browser, since it needs to shell out to Troff to process its
output.

> I have used heirloom troff for years, and felt very lonely. Karsten
> Kunze seemed to be the only other person on earth interested with
> that software. I'm not certain it is worth your time working on
> compatibility with heirloom troff.

Well, I'm certainly interested. Heirloom is very unacknowledged and has a
lot to offer authors by way of font support and microtypography.

Moreover, this is less about supporting individual Troff implementations
and more to do with having a consistent representation of output.


On 25 April 2018 at 01:26, Pierre-Jean Fichet <address@hidden>
wrote:

> John Gardner <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Well, here it is:
> > https://rawgit.com/Alhadis/Roff.js/web-demo/index.html
>
> It is nice to see our old troff on the web, thank you for
> the hard work!
>
> If I remember correctly your other posts, this previewer is
> only a part of the online troff editor you are working on,
> isn't it?
>
> I also noticed you were thinking about a troff to xml converter. May I
> suggest you to have a look at my own "proof of concept" on that
> matter: <http://utroff.org/xml.html> (I posted some mails about it on
> that list a few months ago). It is not especially a great piece of
> software, but I believe the idea of using nroff, with a macro made for
> the purpose of the conversion, still worth being considered. At
> least, I'd be glad to hear criticisms if it is not.
>
> >    - *Heirloom Troff output isn't perfect.* This is a known issue I
> intend
> >    to fix in a future release. At the moment, the renderer is heavily
> reliant
> >    on the ‘w’ and ‘n’ output commands to identify where a word ends.
> Groff
> >    uses these sequences consistently, but Heirloom doesn't.
>
> I have used heirloom troff for years, and felt very lonely. Karsten
> Kunze seemed to be the only other person on earth interested with
> that software. I'm not certain it is worth your time working on
> compatibility with heirloom troff.
>
> Kind Regards,
> Pierre-Jean.
>
>