[bug #68414] Allow roff language to rotate text

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68414>

                 Summary: Allow roff language to rotate text
                   Group: GNU roff
               Submitter: None
               Submitted: Tue 02 Jun 2026 04:16:14 AM UTC
                Category: Core
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Feature change
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Unlocked
         Planned Release: None


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Follow-up Comments:


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Date: Tue 02 Jun 2026 04:16:14 AM UTC By: Anonymous
Add a roff mechanism to print text along a nonhorizontal line.  That is, take
text as currently output and rotate it an arbitrary amount (as distinct from
outputting text at its normal angle but in a different reading direction, a la
bug #60060).

Users request this periodically: see the last half of
http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2025-01/msg00056.html (starting from the phrase
"text on the spine of the cover of my novels"), which links to some previous
discussions.

This is possible in current groff, but the recommendations for achieving it
(use a pic trick, which, unlike the rest of pic, produces raw PostScript
commands rather than roff; or inject raw PostScript directly) are pretty
hackish.  The roff language ought to support it directly.







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