The inners of Lout

[DervishD]

    Hello Jeff :))

    This may be a 'strange' post, but the last messages of this list
have made me think about the inner workings of Lout. And please,
excuse my poor english, but I just use it for programming ;))

    I've read about Lout not doing well with tables (just an example,
I don't remember clearly the issue), having problems with some
things, etc... I've used Lout for a while (less than a year, anyway)
and it always seemed quite good and stable for me, but I only use it
for writing letters and reports. So my question is this: what are the
known problems with Lout (that is, things that will render bad, like
the diagrams in some situations) if I don't use any include file
(that is, I only use it's primitives and operators, never include a
package)? What things should I expect to render bad or far from
perfect?

    I'm currently proposing to my enterprise a change from TeX and
Adobe Framemaker to Lout, being it easier and more powerful to my
opinion, but I cannot present it as a document preparation system
with lots of packages that do the real job or it won't get even
considered :((( (closed minds in the enterprise...). I must present
it as a document preparation system with a little set of operators
that must be learnt but as powerful as TeX.

    It will probably used (if selected) for being automatically used,
e.g. taking a bunch of text and some comments in the adjacent column
(this will be solved with the || operator), centering some text in
the page, making watermarks, etc... We currently use pure PostScript
for this, and TeX for doing manual letters, plus Framemaker for some
layouts (that could be done with TeX, but we aren't TeX gurus,
certainly ;)))). Using Lout will solve that, since it could be used
for *all* three tasks.

    Knowing this: must I expect some strange behaviour and bad
renderings if just using the primitives and not the packages? Will
that bad renderings avoided by other DPS (as TeX) (e.g. I know that
the line breaking algorithm for Lout is almost the same as for TeX,
so I know that TeX won't break lines 'better' than Lout)?.

    Thanks for all, and please excuse the length of this letter, but
I am very interested in making Lout the document preparation system
in the enterprise I work for, since I'm trying to do it from one year
ago ;)

    Thanks indeed, Jeff.

    Raúl