Date   : Sun, 13 Jan 1985 00:15:24 GMT
From   : Tim Maroney <tim@CMU-CS-K.ARPA>
Subject: POW2 public domain formatter

I recently snarfed the POW2 text formatter from SIMTEL20.  It works fairly
well overall, but it has a few deficiencies.  Among these are the lack of
various fonts support (you can overstrike a whole line, and underline
centered text -- whoopee), the treatment of centering as a special command
rather than as a justification mode, the lack of variable-space total
justification for printers that support it, the lack of a file inclusion
command, the lack of three-part titles, and blank lines not causing a
paragraph break.

I have fixed one of these by adding font support.  The command FT,number
switches to the font given by the number, in a table of font handling
routine addresses.  The font handling routines output a single character in
the routine's font, and they are printer specific (non-portable).  However,
so far I have only added this for left justification, the only mode I use;
any font changes will result in bad font-character associations in right or
total justify mode, and will have no effect in unformatted text (which I'm
not really sure is a very bad thing).  I would not want to release such a
program, but I am also not heavily motivated to fix it in a way I will never
use.  So does anyone else want to add this?  If you are serious about it,
and have a weekend to spare, let me know and I'll send you a copy.

Perhaps a number of us could work together on adding the other useful
features I mentioned as well.  POW has the potential to be a very powerful
tool; it seems no one has ever gotten around to making it one.
-=-
Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center
ARPA:  Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K    uucp:   seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim
CompuServe:    74176,1360      audio:  shout "Hey, Tim!"

"Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are
but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains."
Liber AL, II:9.