Plantagenet Penguinista

One required feature (limiting the width of table columns, requiring the use of CSS) was/is absent from htmldoc v1.8*, however CSS support will be present in 1.90 when it’s released, so... use SVN to download the source, compile... it almost does what’s needed. A bit of debugging (of others’ code), a bit of editing, my name up in lights, & presently that digital plastic block will be precisely the correct shape for the job at hand — & still respect the HTML4 standards to the letter. Having the code written (in part) by the people who will be using it works extremely well, as an individual (myself, in this case) can focus on one or a few small details to refine the result to perfectly fit their needs, however the overall designers, heavy-code implementers can stick to principles, get the big things correct, & not worry over-much about each tiny detail.

It’s not so different from primary school days: given a huge collection of varied, interlocking blocks, Joe Random can build a neat aeroplane, a car which can be zoomed to stunning velocity until it disagrees with a wall or door & explodes into a shower of plastic components. Add just a touch of wit & the most amazing devices can be assembled. Zoom forward 40 years, push a DVD into a computer, 5 minutes later it’s running Kubuntu with an office suite, graphics app plus suite of tools for altering images, audio editing & conversion app, video disintegrators & assemblers, two full-fledged SQL databases, name it. Now a challenge arises: you have an app (written from the glass-teletype level, evidently, then steadily kinda-upgraded), thankfully written using gcc but on <ghasp!> SCO Unix, which is driving a specific brand of dot-matrix impact printer on a specific device node under the control of Wyse-brand VT-100B-clone terminals (apparently by a top-gun c...