11 Jun
2024
11 Jun
'24
5:05 p.m.
G. Branden Robinson wrote:
For groff list subscribers, I will add, because people
are accustomed
to me venturing radical suggestions for reforms of macro packages,
I suggest that we can get rid of groff mm's "MOVE" and "PGFORM"
extensions. They're buggy (as the man page has long conceded), and
I don't think anyone ever mastered them, not even their author.
I have quite a lot of old troff -mm source containing lines like
.PGFORM 21c-2i 29.7c-1.5i 1i 1
and they worked fine for me.
Part of troff's attraction is it has reached an age where it doesn't
have breaking changes. Perhaps they should be in a fork of groff.
gbroff? Though I'd have though an entirely new formatter would give
much more freedom for experimentation given modern input and output
formats and greater processing power.
Meanwhile, Werner's earlier groff is still available and other troffs
exist.
--
Cheers, Ralph.