Re: [Groff] The future redux

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Eric,

> Peter wrote:
> > I think what happened is that, over time, near-exclusive use of the
> > PostScript driver caused many of us to confuse groff output with
> > grops output--if not intellectually, at least at the conceptual
> > level.  We began to think of groff as a PostScript typesetting
> > engine.
> 
> I think this is a very shrewd observation.

Indeed.  There's been quite a few answers to "How do I do..?" over the
years that embed a bit of PostScript using \X'ps: ...' or similar.
That's been the best way to achieve the aim given troff's limits.

IIRC Kernighan and Pike's _The Practice of Programming_ was set by
processing troff's output to improve the layout page-by-page, the -mpm
macros included markers where space could be adjusted, so it's not
uncommon to improve troff's output on only some of its output devices.

Cheers, Ralph.