Re: PostScript to ASCII

[Rodrigo Vanegas]

>> In view of Jon's very convincing mail, looks like I'll have to
>> write an ASCII back end for the next version (sigh).  This is
>> not a promise, although it might become one later.
>
>Very useful, I should think.  I use gtroff -a to get
>groff-formatted books into textbook ASCII output.  

I'd like to second (or is it third?) the request for the ASCII back
end.  If this feature actually made it to Lout, i bet that the number
of users would increase dramatically.  It seemes that anyone who uses
the Net & TeX enough has at some point wanted to write documents which
can be "printed" both as ASCII and PS.  So far, the closest thing
has been TeXinfo.

>  Works well, except it trashes tables pretty
>badly.

I wouldn't worry about getting everything to work in ASCII.  Instead,
i would concentrate on getting a working subset working consistently.
Also, since Lout uses actual units of measurement such as points and
inches which are inappropriate for a Lout-ASCII document, something to
consider might be a way of having the logical structure of a document
separated from the layout on the "page".


rodrigo vanegas
address@hidden