Re: the next version of Lout

Hi,

I would just like to say that I definitely think Lout has a future. I 
use it in a web based document production system where the documents are 
stored in a database in HTML format, edited in a web browser using a 
(somewhat) WYSIWYG HTML editor, and then typeset for printing or PDF 
using Lout (with the help of a rudimentary HTML-to-Lout converter 
written in PHP). I intend to publish the code when I am happy with it.

I tried other typesetting solutions, such as wkhtmltopdf, html2ps, or 
simply printing from the web browser, but these didn't work as well as 
Lout for producing professional-looking paginated output. The fact that 
Lout is a single, relatively small, executable also helps when using it 
as a component in a larger application, which is partly why I preferred 
it over Latex (and the fact that Latex seemed more intimidating).

Regards,
Paul.

On 16/01/12 03:54, Jeff Kingston wrote:
> It's time to start thinking about updating Lout from 3.39 to 3.40.
>
> Several Lout users have made major contributions over the years,
> but they have always had to send them to me, and I have always
> reviewed them carefully and, as it were, made them my own before
> incorporating them.  I would like to make this the first truly
> collaborative update of Lout, starting from the 3.39 version
> held on the Savannah web site and doing the updates through that
> site.  This would change Lout into a thing that was maintained
> directly by interested people generally, rather than by me.
>
> What do people think about this?
>
> I'm a newbie at Savannah and such things.  I imagine there are
> several aspects to the change to collaborative style, for example
> reporting bugs through a bug tracking system rather than via the
> mailing list, and building a new pipeline from the current version
> to the Linux distributions.
>
> Up until now, I have decided everything, and that has had its
> advantages and disadvantages.  Some decisions are not easy to
> make.  Presumably, interested expert people would make them
> collaboratively using tools provided by Savannah.  I am not sure
> whether anyone is interested in contributing to Lout in this way
> at this advanced stage of its life.  Learning the tools and
> negotiating with other people takes time.
>
> Below is the current list of things to do.  Dates refer to emails
> I received, mostly Lout mailing list emails, in MM/DD/YYYY format.
> I expect to do most of the jobs myself, as usual, but this time I
> expect to structure the changes as separate updates to the Savannah
> version.  Some could be done by others, and a few are patches that
> could be applied directly on Savannah by their authors.
>
> Jeff
>
>
> Copyright headers
> -----------------
>
> The Savannah people are picky about correct copyright headers, for
> which I don't blame them.  See 09/21/2010 and 10/02/2010.
>
> I need to go through the directories and put a correctly formatted
> copyright line on every file I created myself.
>
> Another major area is the font metrics files.  If anyone would like
> to find and contribute demonstrably public domain versions of the
> font metrics files, that would be great.  The files currently
> distributed with Lout are old, with out of date copyright information
> at the top of them.  According to one knowledgeable email on the Lout
> list (10/05/2010), there are many slightly different versions around.
>
> A third area, one which is a total train wreck, is the hyphenation
> files.  These are basically TeX hyphenation files with some trivial
> extra stuff, mostly written by me, stuck on the front.  They came
> from everywhere in a totally chaotic manner.  I really don't know
> where to start with these files.  They do have comments that preserve
> whatever information about their provenance I received, but even so
> I think they belong in the too hard basket, unless the TeX people
> have been putting effort into standardizing them, in which case we
> could use their work.
>
>
> Everything else needing work that has accumulated since 3.39
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 11/20/2010 Mark Summerfield sent me an updated prg2lout.c.
> 12/02/2010 Request for @Foreword; it comes before @Preface.
> 12/08/2010 @CrossLink problem?
> 12/13/2010 Problem parsing Perl
> 01/12/2011 Patch to allow References section to start on a new page
> 01/11/2011 Patches for including and scaling image files (too major?)
> 02/10/2011 Suggestions re vertical gaps around figures etc. (too hard?)
> 07/08/2011 Increase z06.c MAX_STACK to 250
> 07/11/2011 Reverse paragraph order in whatsnew file
> 10/21/2011 Bug report from self
> 12/07/2011 Documentation bug (already fixed?)
> 12/08/2011 @Place defined in wrong package, needs moving to bsf
> 12/24/2011 Patch for coloured edges in Diag
> 12/24/2011 Patch related to ligatures (why needed?)
> 01/09/2012 Suggestion for a @PageMark on every page (why needed?)
>
>
>    

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