From: garylscott@sbcglobal.net   
      
   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.   
      
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