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diff --git a/doc/design/s7_0 b/doc/design/s7_0 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2cb4245 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/design/s7_0 @@ -0,0 +1,84 @@ +@Section + @Title { Conclusion } +@Begin +@PP +Since its public release in October 1991, the Basser Lout interpreter +has been ported without incident to a wide variety of Unix systems and +hardware. It was tested extensively before release on its own +documentation, and the few minor bugs which have emerged since then have +all been fixed in the second release, scheduled to appear in mid-1992. +@PP +Seven substantial packages of definitions are distributed with Basser +Lout. The DocumentLayout package, and its variants ReportLayout and +BookLayout, provide the standard features that all documents +require: pages, columns, paragraphs, headings, footnotes, floating +figures and tables, chapters and sections, displays and lists, access +to bibliographic databases, cross references, and so on +[11]. The BookLayout package has extra features +needed by books, including an automatically generated table of contents, +Roman page numbers for the prefatory material, running page headers, +odd and even page layouts, and a sorted index. The Eq package formats +equations, and Pas formats Pascal programs [10]; Tab +formats tables [12]; and Fig draws figures +[6]. +@PP +The non-expert user who uses these packages perceives a system of a +standard quite similar to other fully developed batch formatters, +although the interface is considerably more coherent than, say, the troff +family's [8]. The expert user perceives a system which +is radically different from previous ones, in which a great deal can be +achieved very quickly. To take an extreme example, Pas was designed, +implemented, tested, and documented in one afternoon. Eq took about +a week, but most of that time was spent in marshalling the vast +repertoire of mathematical symbols, and fine-tuning the spacing. Most +of the effort seems to go into designing a good interface; most symbols +are implemented in just one or a few lines of Lout. +@PP +A group of about 20 satisfied non-expert users has grown up within +the author's department, mainly Honours students with no investment +in older systems to hold them back. Basser Lout has been advertised +on the Internet news as available via anonymous {@I ftp}, so the +extent of its outside user community is hard to gauge. About 50 +people have mailed comments or questions to the author; many +of these people have ported the program, written small definitions, +and modified the standard packages. +@PP +Future work could usefully begin with the improvements suggested in this +paper: overlapping spanning columns, better semantics for available +space, and especially horizontal galleys. Support for non-European +languages is also needed. However, the main task is the development of +an interactive document editor based on Lout. A structure editor similar +to Lilac [13], which already has objects and user-defined +symbols, is envisaged; since cross references are easy when the whole +document is available, the only major new problem is the treatment of +galleys, including the expansion and retraction of receptive symbols. +@LP +@LP +@B { Note. } Since the above was written the author has completed a +revised version of Basser Lout, in which the problem concerning +available space mentioned in Section {@NumberOf style} has been resolved. +@LP +@LP +@B { Acknowledgment. } The author gratefully acknowledges many +valuable discussions with Douglas W. Jones, especially during the +development of the galley abstraction; and also many helpful comments on +presentation by the anonymous referee. +@DP +@DP +@Heading { References } +@NumberedList +@LI @RefPrint kingston91 +@LI @RefPrint kingston91over +@LI @RefPrint kingston91basser +@LI @RefPrint furuta82 +@LI @RefPrint kernighan75 +@LI @RefPrint kingston91fig +@LI @RefPrint reid80 +@LI @RefPrint ossanna76 +@LI @RefPrint knuth84 +@LI @RefPrint kingston91eq +@LI @RefPrint kingston91begin +@LI @RefPrint kingston91tab +@LI @RefPrint brooks91 +@EndList +@End @Section |