[9fans] Ligatures

[9fans] Ligatures

[j.krug]

Hi,

Can anyone explain how troff handles ligatures on plan9? 

With this input 

.TS
center allbox;
l l l l l.
\(Fi	ffi	ffi	fb03	64259
\(fi	fi	fi	fb01	64257
\(ff	ff	ff	fb00	64256
\(Ae	AE	Æ	00c6	198
\(ae	ae	æ	00e6	230
\(fl	fl	fl	fb02	64258
\(Fl	ffl	ffl	fb04	64260
-	ft	ſt	fb05	64261
.TE

piped through tbl | troff -ms | lp -d stdout generates a postscript
file that will only display the ae ligatures (whether viewed with page
or printed).

The third column is from Compose X hex-code.

Or is this a font problem (which I am still unsure how to solve)?

The last page of /sys/doc/troff.ps (the tables of special characters
include the ligatures) seems to have the same behaviour.

I got the unicode values from 
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(typography) 

Cheers,
John

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[rog]

j.krug@lancaster.ac.uk:
> Can anyone explain how troff handles ligatures on plan9? 

nope...  but what you're seeing does indeed look look like a font
problem - peter-faces are shown instead of the correct characters, and
i get several error messages like this:

/386/bin/aux/tr2post: <stdin>:52 :WARNING: cannot find glyph, rune=0x46 stoken=<Fi> troff font R

which seems fairly clear.

someone out there should know how to substitute a more suitable font...

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[boyd, rounin]

> j.krug@lancaster.ac.uk:
> Can anyone explain how troff handles ligatures on plan9? 

this might help debug it:

    http://www.insultant.net/code/plan9/vr.c

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[George Michaelson]

 
Its always appealed to me that ligatures are the small threads you tie around
arteries on bleeding stumps after a successful amputation, and which are pulled
on to reveal the laudible pus, or fateful corruption...

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[boyd, rounin]

> Its always appealed to me that ...

it would appeal to me if the APNIC actually had anything on its website to
combat spam.

they shoulda left the whole thing with kre.

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[George Michaelson]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 01:16:31 +0200 "boyd, rounin" <boyd@insultant.net> wrote:

>> Its always appealed to me that ...
>
>it would appeal to me if the APNIC actually had anything on its website to
>combat spam.

aye well, small steps. what do you suggest? 

>
>they shoulda left the whole thing with kre.

KRE never really had Asia-wide numbering. I think you're confusing us with
the .AU authority. We do IP addresses. We came from Tokyo, which is not Melbourne.

-george

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[boyd, rounin]

> aye well, small steps. what do you suggest?

    http://mail-abuse.org

versions of this have been around since '97 or so.

> KRE never really had Asia-wide numbering. I think you're confusing us with
> the .AU authority. We do IP addresses. We came from Tokyo, which is not
Melbourne.

tokyo?  group decisions leading to no progress?

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[George Michaelson]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 01:58:41 +0200 "boyd, rounin" <boyd@insultant.net> wrote:

>> aye well, small steps. what do you suggest?
>
>    http://mail-abuse.org
>
>versions of this have been around since '97 or so.

we're a membership body. I'm not convinced the peoples republic of china can
demonstrate a desire for us to run this service. But if you want to put up a
policy proposal, the APNIC web should explain how you do it.

>
>> KRE never really had Asia-wide numbering. I think you're confusing us with
>> the .AU authority. We do IP addresses. We came from Tokyo, which is not
>Melbourne.
>
>tokyo?  group decisions leading to no progress?

oh come on. Otemachi is full of progress. How can heated toilet seats being
sold next to KT66 valves not be progress?

-George


-- 
George Michaelson       |  APNIC
Email: ggm@apnic.net    |  PO Box 2131 Milton QLD 4064
Phone: +61 7 3858 3150  |  Australia
  Fax: +61 7 3858 3199  |  http://www.apnic.net

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[boyd, rounin]

> But if you want to put up a policy proposal, ...

policy proposal?  just get out there and do it.

> oh come on. Otemachi is full of progress. How can heated toilet seats
being
> sold next to KT66 valves not be progress?

i see you've never participated in a japanese meeting
or if you have you know how to do it very well.

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[George Michaelson]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 02:33:12 +0200 "boyd, rounin" <boyd@insultant.net> wrote:

>> But if you want to put up a policy proposal, ...
>
>policy proposal?  just get out there and do it.

generally, people don't like that. integers between 0 and 2**32 being a
limited supply (like big eyed beans from Venus, oh my oh my) tends towards
not wanting 'just do it' as a deployment engine. but hey, please feel free
to advise your customers to simply walk the number-space until they stop getting
ping responses, and use the address. I'm sure the upstream ISPs will love it.

(did you know swiss telecom routinely announce random /8? They've been accepting
 61/8 for some time now, despite it being an AP region allocation block.. oh,
 you have to love those chocolate gnomes.)


>
>> oh come on. Otemachi is full of progress. How can heated toilet seats
>being
>> sold next to KT66 valves not be progress?
>
>i see you've never participated in a japanese meeting
>or if you have you know how to do it very well.

Oh, I've been in several. Generally I get rolled. But then, I get rolled
in the meetings with non-Japanese people too. 

You know, having read 'Eats Shoots and Leaves' I can't say I miss either
the apostrophe/colon opportunities unused here, or for that matter the ligatures.

be honest: when was the last time you actually needed that kerning? nroff
just works.

-George

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[boyd, rounin]

> generally, people don't like that. integers between 0 and 2**32 being a
> limited supply

no, they are not.  there are only some 6 billion people on the planet:

    http://opr.princeton.edu/popclock

of which a lot of those are chinese who have vicious censorship on IP feeds.
you can kick in india too, so that cuts it down a bit further.

handing out blocks to organisations who then delegate using the various
reserved nets for private networks conserves a lot of them.  i don't recall
the RFC, but it specifies them.

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[Geoff Collyer]

Ligatures were almost certainly added to troff to exploit the fonts on
the GSI CAT/4 phototypesetter that troff was originally intended to
drive.  It had ligatures for ff, fi, fl, Fi and perhaps Fl in its font
set.  (We had a CAT/8 [with twice the fonts!] at the U of T comp.
center.)  As nice as 1200 dpi laser printer fonts look, the
phototypesetter output was gorgeous.  No jaggies at all.  You can see
reproductions of phototypesetter output in the early books, at least,
from 1127: K&R 1, Software Tools and The Elements of Programming
Style, for example.  The phototypesetter output (after being
developed) was even sharper.

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[boyd, rounin]

> Ligatures were almost certainly added to troff to exploit the fonts on
> the GSI CAT/4 phototypesetter that troff was originally intended to
> drive.

i'm with you, captain.

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[George Michaelson]

geoff, I loved my ll and ff and ffl too, and I loved the smell of that wet process
paper spitting out of the 100dpi printer we had, and I even loved the two
hypen cutmarks added to tell me where to cut the paper to get A4 back.

(hell, I even loved the mistaken TBL throw-back of 2mil or so which Lesk told
 me was to fix the over-correct of the mechanical typesetter doing table boxes)

but, the thing I really loved most of all was the W O R D S

I haven't met a printer yet who didn't want to get down into the paper tape
driving their bromide-cutter and freak a bit with the positioning before the
photons hit the phototypesetter. With the best will in the world, each of them
has their own idea of what it 'should' look like. lligatures are a ccompromise
for these people. They'd rather be carving them by hand.

-George

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[boyd, rounin]

> geoff, I loved my ll and ff and ffl too, and I loved the smell of that wet
process

smelled like ... victory.

Re: [9fans] Ligatures

[Dave Lukes]

On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 00:12, George Michaelson wrote:
>  Its always appealed to me that ligatures are the small threads you tie around
> arteries on bleeding stumps after a successful amputation, and which are pulled
> on to reveal the laudible pus, or fateful corruption...

:-)

Also a fine cord used for strangulation.