Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcil...@dartmouth.edu> writes: >> I wonder if I can use groff (maybe grap) to also create such a bar chart or >> timeline. > > I'd say that depends on the text you wish to attach to the timeline. > Only tbl is good at incorporating variable-size blobs of text, but tbl > would be hard to harness for a typical timeline. Also, a horizontal > timeline with vertical labels is beyond the capability of any of the > preprocessors. > > That said, if the textual labels are all horizontal and modest, I'd > instinctively reach for pic to produce either a horizontal or a > vertical timeline. Pic has good facilities for doing that metrically > and/or topologically. If you don't know pic, > /usr/share/doc/groff/pic.ps is full of suggestive examples.
Thank you very much. In my imagination, the timeline should show the relevant dates below the horizontal axis, and perhaps the short names of the events and the durations e.g. in days inside the bars. I also remembered that my copy of APUE shows a simple timeline in the preface (page xvii) and I guess somewhere I have some "pic hints" written by Richard Stevens. I will try that pic-route and see how far I get. I guess if have to break time periods down to days and use those to position the bars -- just thinking loud... If someone knows an elegant way to calculate the number of days from time periods in groff, I'd be very thankful. Regards, Dirk
