Broff and a proposed net project

[jaap at mcvax.UUCP]

Of course it is nice to do a project and communicating about it on the net.
It is one of the reason why the unix network exist.

I don't consider a rewrite of *roff to be a serious project. (BROFF: a
Burlesque Rewrite Off a Famous Formatter?).

First, my boss doesn't pay me do have hobbies like this.

Second, it is a bad idea to make a look alike with more or less the same input
requirements. (By the way, it will take a 2 seconds edit job to change to
change \n in \# and a little sed script for tbl, eqn, ideal and pic to let
them know about it.)
What is really needed is a new approach with new concepts for text processing.
I don't think that a text processing in a programming language flavour is a
solution. This will be just a tool made by programmers for programmers.
It would certainly not help our typist pool.
To have things done more interactively would be a better idea.

By the way, if you are continueing this project, keep the hyphenation algorithm
as clean as it is now. It's now trivial to put a different algorithm in, f.i.
for Dutch.

Final remark:
	\*(OQ doen't address the character OQ but a by .ds OQ defined macro.

	Jaap "Not wanting to recode years 60's software in the 80's" Akkerhuis.
	{philabs,mcvax}!jaap.