Re: Announcement: free Lua 4 Quick Reference booklet

["K. H. Man" <mkh@...>]

Hi,
[This is a little OT from the usual Lua matters but might concern 
those who want to customize the quick reference booklet.]

Bennett Todd wrote:
> 2003-03-20T20:17:33 K. H. Man:
> <snip> I'd recommend you take a look at Lout before
> trying to do this in pure PostScript; you might find it's
> "close enough" to give you the control you want, while 
> being much easier to compose and therefore to maintain.

Thanks for the info. I've noticed Lout mentioned a number of times 
on Web pages in the same breath as TeX, and someone else mentioned 
it too so I think I'll take a look at it.

I won't be deciding anytime soon. If I am going to make that big 
change, I'll have to satisfy myself first, then I'll make a mockup 
of a couple of pages and post an request for comments. Ease of 
customization by others is one of my goals, so I'll do my best to 
avoid setting up unnecessary barriers.

So any PS script will have to exhibit these capabilities:
(1) able to generate booklets and original-sized documents
(2) use standard (Type 1) PDF fonts for platform independence
(3) have a kind of markup that enables quick style changes
(4) typical users able to comfortably edit body text
(5) comfortably change pagination, margins and alignment
(6) able to be parsed by regexps, if needed

I do have a soft spot for Forth, hence my musings about straight 
PS. It doesn't seem to be much more difficult than TeX, if you 
avoid looking at word definitions, that is :-)

  % prints "a few words" if the environ is set up properly
  (a few words) show
  % marking up can be done with custom words, like this:
  (The function) show (lua_setglobal) func_defn
  % it can be less wordy too (markups are postfix)
  (the quick brown fox) S (jumps) I (over the lazy dog) S

I'll post again w.r.t. this proposal when I have something to show 
(or I'll tell everyone that a PS source is not-doable.) :-) I'll 
not sucker anyone with a sudden announcement of change ;-)
--
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia... fiddling with Open Source,
bits and pieces at http://www.geocities.com/keinhong/
-----------------------------------------------------
"It's GNU/Linux dammit!" - RMS
RMS turns 50 on March 16 2003, Happy birthday RMS!!!