Re: [9fans] troff and ps related

[Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com>]

I assume you have a non-Plan 9 machine to play with.
It's worth trying Heirloom troff there to see if the boxes
are done better.  They probably are.  It would be a big
integration effort to fit the Heirloom troff changes into the
Plan 9 troff changes.  Maybe it is worth it; maybe not.

I like Heirloom troff for papers for its better handling of
postscript and opentype fonts, although when I need
to do nasty low-level things (like I do to generate slides)
I need to fall back to the Plan 9 troff, because the low-level
details seem to differ between the two.

Honestly the box drawing has never really bothered me.
I don't draw boxes around things because it's too noisy
for my tastes anyway.  Faulting troff for its box drawing is
like faulting a web browser for its text blinking.

> Do you think that troff is really dead?

Is my pocketknife dead?  Was it ever alive?
When troff does what I need it to do and is the quickest
way for me to get that done, it's the right tool for me.
It may not be the right tool for you.

Russ

P.S. For what it's worth, the Plan 9 troff reads tex
hyphenation rules too.