[comp.text] Re^2: What features would you like in GNU troff?

keld@freja.diku.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) (06/28/89)

Something I would like to see in a GNU troff was support for
8-bit character sets like LATIN-1 and LATIN-2, with additional
support for people only having 7-bit (ASCII) equipment using the
full character sets. This would be very useful in Europe, Canada,
Mexico and South America and other places where European languages
other than English is used.

Part of this is to provide standard names for 8-bit characters,
and Brian Kernighan of AT&T Bell Laboratories is maintaining
a list of these character names. I have been collaborating on the
formation of this list, and I can send you an article on this.

Another thing I would personallly favor is a combined nroff/troff
product, so you can use troff on any printer, regardless how dumb it
is. 

scott@dtscp1.UUCP (Scott Barman) (06/28/89)

In article <4771@freja.diku.dk> keld@freja.diku.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) writes:
>Another thing I would personallly favor is a combined nroff/troff
>product, so you can use troff on any printer, regardless how dumb it
>is. 

You can do this now--I wrote a driver for a Silver Reed 400 daisywheel
printer (does anyone else read the DAK catalogue :-) and it takes the
ditroff output file as input.  I've also done the same with NEC Spinwriters
and one of the Epson printers (I forgot which one).  The most difficult part
was the single size of everything except the sub- and super-scripts, but
it can be done with some "creative" hacking.

Sorry, I do not have the sources any more (my PC's hard disk crashed and I
lost the Silver Reed driver).

-- 
scott barman
{gatech, emory}!dtscp1!scott