Re: new version of Lout imminent

[Jeff Kingston]

Mark Summerfield wrote:

  > 1) One thing that would save me a lot of hassle is at least moving
  > 
  >  @TopMargin
  >  @FootMargin
  >  @OddLeftMargin
  >  @OddRightMargin
  >  @EvenLeftMargin
  >  @EvenRightMargin
  >  @OddTop
  >  @OddFoot
  >  @EvenTop
  >  @EvenFoot
  > 
  > into @Document and @Report, so that they can be changed as
  > 
  >     @Document
  >         @TopMargin { 2c }
  >         # etc.
  >     //

It's a hassle behind the scenes to do this, and where would it end?
One option would be to create, once and for all, a shell script
containing

    lout 'address@hidden' 'address@hidden' ...

unless of course you change margin widths frequently.  But I still
maintain that copying one setup file is not a lot of hassle.

  > 2) An option to @Graph that would add a grid with appropriate
  > specifications. At the moment I'm reduced to doing this:
  > 
  >   (horrible workaround deleted)
  > 
  > Or am I being silly and missing some feature? (Yes, I've read the
  > manual.)

I believe this has come up before, in fact I could have sworn I had
already done it, but I've checked the code and apparently not.  Perhaps
I'm confusing it with the "grid" texture.  I'll take a look at it.
I'll take a good look through the existing code too.  It seems similar
to xticks and yticks, going right across the graph instead of just a
short way; but no doubt people who ask for grids would still want to be
able to set xticks and yticks independently.

  > Being able to underlay a grid for a @Diag (even when using @Tbl to lay
  > out the diagram) would also be v. useful.

This is probably harder because @Diag does not have a coordinate system
in the same way that @Graph does.  If I add it to @Graph you could then
use @OverStrike to get it under a diagram too.

  > 3) An @Letter document type would be nice.

This has come up before too, and always founders because no-one
seems to know what features to offer (including me, although I have
distributed my own @Letter definition to interested parties), and
letter styles are basically trivial anyway except for the letterhead,
which is completely different for everyone.

  > 4) Output into some tractable format for repurposing would be nice.

Is XML the format that dare not speak its name?

  > 5) More/improved intermediate-level documentation; I often find the user
  > guide insufficient and the advanced user guide too difficult.

Not sure what to do about this.  If there are one or two leading
examples I could add advanced sections about them at the end of
the relevant sections of the User's Guide, as for @Diag now.

  > PS Recently I've been doing lots of documents with maths in them and
  > using @Eq seriously for the first time; I've never used any other
  > equation tools so can't compare, but I've found it very simple and
  > intuitive, and thus far been able to do everything I've needed.

The design is based on Kernighan and Cherry's "eqn" preprocessor for
the troff system.  To quote from memory from my 1993 journal paper about
Lout:  "When one examines existing document layout systems, looking
for general principles, Kernighan and Cherry's eqn system stands out
like a beacon."  Lout's implementation is a package of definitions,
theirs was hard-coded.

Thanks as always for the suggestions.

Jeff Kingston