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From: r...@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.unix.questions
Subject: [nt]roff proportional spacing and hyphenation
Message-ID: <167@wpg.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Sep-87 23:21:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: wpg.167
Posted: Tue Sep 29 23:21:49 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Oct-87 05:42:48 EDT
Organization: WP Group, POB 306, Metairie, LA 70004
Lines: 24
Keywords: proportional spacing, formatters, hyphenation, questions
I have been trying to implement proportional space printing using nroff
and a fully equipped Diablo 630. I reworked the nroff driver tables so
that nroff would send a string to turn on the Diablo's built-in circuits
for performing PS printing and justified right margins. The output,
however, was not satisfactory. After turning off the right margin
justification, I realized that nroff was wrapping some lines as much as an
inch and a half away from the margin because it was, of course, still
assuming constant-width characters. This forced the Diablo to insert so
much blank padding that some l i n e s looked truly ridiculous!
At that point, I decided to write my own crude formatter with builtin
character width tables, but quickly gave up when I decided that
hyphenation would require programming time/talent/brains far exceeding
what I could bring to bear on the task. After looking for another
formatter, I came across a public domain version of nroff, but it turned
out to be MS-DOS specific.
I realized that this question has probably been posed several hundred times,
but my company has only been on the net for about a month.
Any email suggestions, comments, or pointers about implementing PS
(proportional space) printing with [nt]roff, or similar packages would be
greatly appreciated. Barring that, how about some tips (or PD sources) for
handling hyphenation?
--
Russell Lawrence (Too poor to buy a laser)
WP Group POB 306, Metairie, LA 70004
AT&T: +1 504 456 0001
UUCP: !uunet!wpg!russ
COMPUSERVE: 72337,3261
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Path: utzoo!henry
From: he...@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: [nt]roff proportional spacing and hyphenation
Message-ID: <8683@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Oct-87 11:53:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8683
Posted: Thu Oct 1 11:53:53 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Oct-87 11:53:53 EDT
References: <167@wpg.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 12
Keywords: proportional spacing, formatters, hyphenation, questions
> ... I reworked the nroff driver tables so
> that nroff would send a string to turn on the Diablo's built-in circuits
> for performing PS printing... it was, of course, still
> assuming constant-width characters...
Um, has it escaped your attention that an nroff driver table includes a
width table, and nroff is fairly willing to deal with characters that are
not all the same width? (I do recall some bugs down in the fine points,
but the basic logic works.)
--
"There's a lot more to do in space | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
than sending people to Mars." --Bova | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry