Re: [9fans] troff and ps related

[Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com>]

2009/7/8 Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com>:
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:49 AM, Rudolf Sykora<rudolf.sykora@gmail.com> wrote:
>> can anybody tell me why whatever .ps about troff/eqn I print has
>> misplaced lines?
>> E.g. quite generally, lines that make up tables either don't touch, or
>> stick out somewhere...
>
> this is because tbl is using characters to draw lines.
> it's not a great strategy.

Does it mean that I can't do much about it? That it will probably be
always like this?

>
>> Also, should
>> .BX something
>> make a nice box around 'something' or not? Anywhere I look I see the
>> top line be slightly above the side lines, it doesn't touch them.
>
> maybe should be doesn't.  there's a reason no one uses it.
> even if it worked, boxes around words are pretty heavy weight.

Ok.
This then leads me to a question...
I've been using TeX to typeset my texts. I've never quite liked it,
all those backslashes. A few days ago I read the articles about eqn
and was surprised that it is quite nice. That I can read my formulas
when written (quite difficult in TeX) and that there are some natural
rules that simplify the notation (like that spaces are the delimiters,
etc; one doesn't have to bracket everything). I've understood that the
language is not so powerful as TeX, but it is at the same time much
simpler (source code). Further, somebody (see Heirloom tools) changed
troff so that it can use all types of current fonts, can do
microtypography, format whole paragraphs if wanted, can read
hyphenation rules formely designed for Tex. These changes (especially
fonts, hyphanation), if propagated to plan9 troff, could be of some,
not negligible, value.
But now (from the answers to my questions about boxes, tables) I am
becoming less enthusiastic. Can anybody comment on this? Do you think
that troff is really dead?

Thanks
Ruda