From: garylscott@sbcglobal.net   
      
   On 10/6/2024 10:18 AM, Gary Scott wrote:   
   > On 10/5/2024 10:39 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
   >> On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 21:35:42 -0500, Gary Scott wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> On 10/5/2024 8:58 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> How could it have been better without regular expressions?   
   >>>   
   >>> Extremely powerful substitution ...   
   >>   
   >> But without regular expressions, that kind of thing gets quite limited.   
   >>   
   >>> full control of fonts, code points, code pages, dynamically controlled   
   >>> overprinting, image handling ...   
   >>   
   >> troff was doing this sort of thing years before. Remember that the Unix   
   >> folks at Bell Labs got the funding to develop their new OS primarily on   
   >> the rationale that it would offer good text-processing facilities, like   
   >> you describe.   
   >>   
   >>> direct/binary datastream writing/editing, formatting page columns,   
   >>> gutters, running headings/footings, tables, lists (order, unordered,   
   >>> etc.) ...   
   >>   
   >> I notice no mention of line-numbering. That’s rather crucial for legal   
   >> documents -- another selling point that the Bell Labs folks were able to   
   >> address.   
   >>   
   >>> ... full support for foreign languages, double byte character sets   
   >>> decades before unicode ...   
   >>   
   >> I don’t know why you think that was such a radical feature, given that   
   >> the   
   >> Koreans introduced their national double-byte code in 1974, the Japanese   
   >> theirs in 1978, and the Chinese did GB2312 in 1980.   
   >>   
   >>> Directly define your own gml (predecessor to html) tags.   
   >>   
   >> troff incorporated the idea of macros right from the beginning.   
   >   
   > This stuff was done in the 60s and 70s, certainly it evolved over time.   
   And yes it supported line numbers and change markups.   
      
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