29 Nov
2018
29 Nov
'18
8:25 a.m.
Eric Allman <tuhs(a)eric.allman.name> wrote:
[I sent this almost a week ago, but it never showed
up, probably because
Speaking of troff, that was interesting documentation. Ossanna's
documentation told you exactly what all of the commands did, but didn't
say why they did it. Many of the features seemed absolutely crazy at
first. I probably read that document 50 times when writing the -me
macros, every time having a light bulb go off in my head. I finally
concluded that _everything_ was needed to do something useful, and you
could do pretty much _anything_ with the available tools (including
things like page balancing). A master work of design, and blissfully
complete documentation (even if a bit obscure to the newbie).
Any chance you, or someone else, could write that missing manual that
explains the "why" of the various troff features?
I've been through CSTR 54 a few times too, although I haven't tried
to write a macro package from scratch, and I have to admit that there
are things that mystify me.
Thanks!
Arnold