Knuth Plass

[Douglas McIlroy]

Bernard wrote, "My work on the knuth-plass branch is also interesting,"

I'd love to hear how you approach that. All I could think of is really
heavy-duty dynamic programming that replicates almost the full internal
state of groff in every path.

As one example, the K-P paper sets type inside a circle given as a
prcomputed list of line lengths. The way one would specify a circle in
groff would be as a self-perpetuating lined trap that runs an incremental
circle generator, How do you deal with this inextricable admixture of
format-specification and line-breaking?

Circle-filling is rare, but it is just an extreme case of wrapping around a
figure inserted at a trap location, which is not unusual.

A second concern is about K-P and unjustfied text, which I have come to
prefer. K-P typesetting then gives every paragraph a different apparent
width. In my experience this is typically more objectionable than results
from plain old greedy line filling. (Of course I expect the latter to still
be available.)

Doug