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Subject: ff: fast text formatter (part 1 of 2)
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Mod.sources:  Volume 3, Issue 51
Submitted by: decvax!wanginst!perlman

                 ff: A Fast Text Formatter

Here is ff, a fast text  formatter.  It fills a gap  between
the fmt program in Berkeley UNIX and systems like nroff.  ff
is sort  of an  inside-out  nroff.   There are  no  commands
inside a file, but the common options like line width,  line
spacing, indentation,  pagination,  etc., are  command  line
options.  ff is a general  utility that lets you throw  away
most uses of programs like pr, expand, and especially fmt.

There are  a lot  of options  for ff--some  would argue  too
many--but they are necessary  to provide the  functionality.
I make shell scripts that encode most of my needs.  Here  is
the shell script I  am using to  format these paragraphs  (I
have the filter bound to a function key; I go to the top  of
the paragraph and type PF1).
	exec ff -w 60 -j -B "	 '*.@|" $*
I have  scripts  for  centering  regions  and  for  indented
paragraphs.   These  and  a  nice  one  for  making  program
listings are listed in the manual entry.  emacs users  might
find the centering  option useful, even  though many of  the
other functions are built in to  emacs.  vi users will  find
ff and option-variants on it much more useful.

ff really is fast--roughly  twice the speed  as fmt for  the
formats fmt  supports.   For paginating  text, ff  is  about
twice as fast as  pr.  The tab  expansion options on ff  are
comparable to  those of  the  expand program,  but ff  is  a
little slower than expand  on expanding tabs--it simply  has
too many concerns that expand can ignore.  Still, ff is fast
enough to bind  to keys in  emacs or vi  to filter  regions,
making vi a passable wysiwyg editor.  One reason for this is
extensive profiling and  optimization, some  by my  students
for a programming efficiency assignment.