Re: Groff (was: Removing ARCNET stuffs)

[tlaronde%polynum.com@localhost]

On Mon, Jun 01, 2015 at 05:50:07PM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 09:24:48PM -0400, Andrew Cagney wrote:
> 
>  > (oh and please delete C++ groff,  just replace it with that AWK script)
> 
> which awk script? :-)
> 
> (quite seriously, I've been looking for a while for an alternative to
> groff for typesetting the miscellaneous articles in base.
> 

(Delenda Carthago...) Once more, I will re-advertise that the complete
Donald E. Knuth typesetting system is available, that can be even 
restricted to strictly just D.E.K.'s work (even with the fonts,
this is a matter of far less than 10 MB); that is pure C89
(some auxiliaries invoke POSIX.2 utilities, mainly sh(1) but these
are just auxiliaries); that comes with the fonts, the ability to
design the fonts, the formatting (TeX) and a format dvi à la PDF
that can be used to generate a formatted text version; the means
to use also mathematics; the means to draw figures rasterized with
METAFONT (more general figures with MetaPOST, supplementary, but
this generates PS); and with a compiling framework that is not GPLn
but BSD.

Since for a system written in C the main "human" language is "CEE"
that is a kind of technical english, the limitation to 8 bits (that
could be changed by dealing with font directories and not font
files, i.e. a directory of 256 glyphes sub-font) is not an immediate 
problem.

The conversion from roff to tex should be easier than the
reverse and I expect relatively simple for 95% of the work (the man
pages).

IMHO, the main tasks remaining are (could be GSoC by the way):
- give a DVI viewer (starting from scratch);
- extend with the minimal changes TeX to be able to use UTF-8 (meaning,
as UTF-8, that ASCII can be fed as is, but that this is just 8 bits
still at entry---mouth);
- whether develop a C SmallScript to be able to interpret the limited
MetaPOST PostScript; or extend DVI and METAFONT to handle MetaPOST
capabilities and rasterize the figures, in order for the system to
be totally self-sufficient (no PDF viewer or PostScript interpreter to
be able to render the pages).

It is here:

	http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html

It is not orphaned but stalled for the moment due to ETIME.

Best,
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
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