Re: [Groff] more on ellipsis...

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

> [Ideally, typing `?...' and `!...' should be sufficient, for example
>  using ligatures:
> 
>    ?... -> \[?..]
>    !... -> \[!..]
>    ...  -> \[...]
>    etc.
> 
>  Unfortunately, groff doesn't support this (yet).]

That is a very good idea which I've also thought of proposing to
the mailing list.  It shouldn't be too hard, either.  (I hope.
I havn't looked at the code yet.)  But groff already has a
mechanism for recognizing the fi, fl, etc. sequences in the
input stream, and a builtin mapping to the corresponding
ligature characters, which "only" has to be extended (maybe
dynamically from the manuscript as well, on a per-font basis).
Of course, the font description files will have to be slightly
modified (compatibility issues?), for example

  name AGaramond-Regular
  internalname AGaramond-Regular
  spacewidth 250
  encoding text.enc
  ligatures
  fi fi
  fl fl
  ff ff
  ffi Fi
  ffl Fl
  kernpairs
  A z 6
  A w -42
  ...
  charset
  ha      500,626 2       0000    -- asciicircum
  ti      500,297 0       0001    -- asciitilde
  ...

What do you think?


Cheers,
Tadziu