Subj : text reformating
To   : Grant Weasner
From : Kai Richter
Date : Thu Jun 05 2025 04:53 pm

Hello Grant!

04 Jun 25, Grant Weasner wrote to Maurice Kinal:

 GW> In my original post I had chosen 64 columns wide is from the link
 GW> below, so my gopher pages could have enough width left over to pretty
 GW> some of the text with boxes.

This display/format/layout problem is the reason why markup languages have been invented. For example css within html or markdown on github readme.md files.

If you are not looking for a one time conversion then text processing workflow may be a good idea. You could keep two text files, one for easy human editing and the output of text processing for the gopher files.

troff/groff have its own markup language. For example:
..ll 67
sets the line lenght to 67 chars
..sp 2
insert two blank lines.

The groff system can do macros. Some examples and better than mine explanations can be found here:

https://www.davebucklin.com/play/2018/03/04/gopher-groff.html

For the manpages format there is an existing macro set called "groff an.tmac" macro package or man macro package. I think it comes with man usually, because on my outdated system it can be found with "man 7 man". There are macros for relative margin indent and indented paragraph macros.

Regards

Kai

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