Re: Groff vs Heirloom troff (was Re: Quick question: how to do .index in groff?)

[Dave Kemper]

On 7/31/20, Peter Schaffter <peter@schaffter.ca> wrote:
> Several years ago, I fielded the idea that, instead of chasing after
> the Grail of paragraph-at-once, groff's line-formatting algorithm be
> improved instead.  I worked on systems that used the formatting
> strategy I proposed
>
>   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2014-03/msg00322.html
>
> and can confirm that it significantly reduced the amount of
> intervention required to achieve good grey on a line-by-line basis.
> There wasn't much interest in the proposal back then--I felt a bit
> like a voice crying in the wilderness--but maybe it's time to try
> crying again?

I wonder if it's less a lack of interest and more a recognition that
we have a shortage of people with the willingness and expertise to
make any substantive changes to the groff code.  I, and I'm sure
others, welcome any improvements to typographic output, but it's hard
to get excited over ideas -- even good ideas -- if no one plans to
turn them into working code.  That situation hasn't changed much since
2014.