URL: <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?66815>
Summary: increase -a ("approximate") output fidelity
Group: GNU roff
Submitter: barx
Submitted: Tue 18 Feb 2025 11:50:13 PM CST
Category: Core
Severity: 1 - Wish
Item Group: Feature change
Status: None
Privacy: Public
Assigned to: None
Open/Closed: Open
Discussion Lock: Any
Planned Release: None
_______________________________________________________
Follow-up Comments:
-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 18 Feb 2025 11:50:13 PM CST By: Dave <barx>
Plenty of things on a typesetter can't be replicated well on a terminal. But
some things can be approximated reasonably well, as this example in nroff
shows:
$ echo '\Z@\h@6n@abc@def' | nroff | cat -s
def abc
That input could be represented with about the same fidelity in -a output.
But currently, -a output for it is more lossy.
$ echo '\Z@\h@6n@abc@def' | groff -a
<beginning of page>
def
I don't expect -a output to match the nroff output. In particular, horizontal
space of varying widths in typeset output is almost always collapsed to a
single space character in -a output, and that would be acceptable here as
well. But these two strings, although in a different order in the input from
how they're output, are both easily visible and non-overlapping, and -a could
reflect this better.
This is not a new problem; the above results are consistent using any groff
from 1.19.2 to git HEAD.
(For comparison: with Heirloom, its nroff and its -a switch to troff both
output "abcdef" (just with different spacing). It produces correct
PostScript, same as groff does.)
_______________________________________________________
Reply to this item at:
<https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?66815>
_______________________________________________
Message sent via Savannah
https://savannah.gnu.org/
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
