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224 lines
7.7 KiB
224 lines
7.7 KiB
8 months ago
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<!DOCTYPE HTML>
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<meta charset="UTF-8">
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<title>Groff Mission Statement - 2014</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet"
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type="text/css"
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href="groff-mission-statement.css">
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<link rel="author"
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href="mailto:peter@schaffter.ca">
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<link rel="stylesheet"
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type="text/css"
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href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Cardo">
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</head>
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<body>
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<div class="main">
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<h1>
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Groff Mission Statement
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<br/>
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2014
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</h1>
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<span class="divider">☙</span>
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<p class="initial">
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As the most widely deployed implementation of troff in use today,
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groff holds an important place in the Unix universe. Frequently
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and erroneously dismissed as a legacy program for formatting
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Unix manuals (manpages), groff is in fact a sophisticated system
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for producing high-quality typeset material, from business
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correspondence to complex technical reports and plate-ready books.
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With an impressive record for backward compatibility, it continues
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to evolve and play a leading role in the development of free
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typesetting software.
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</p>
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<p>
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Future development will focus on groff’s typesetting
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capabilities, the goal being to improve automatic formatting
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of documents with no corresponding loss of user control over
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typographic details. In addition to the core binary, where much
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of the work will be done, the system comprises a macro language,
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pre-built macro sets, pre- and post-processors, and drivers for
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outputting to various formats. The guiding principle for changes
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to these parts will be to improve and extend, not alter, especially
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with respect to established usage.
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</p>
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<p>
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A key part of the project’s mandate will be to redress issues
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that have historically discouraged widespread adoption of groff.
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Issues include the perceived superiority of
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<span class="mkern">T</span><span class="tex">e</span>X
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for general-purpose typesetting, the long and somewhat unfortunate
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association with manpages, and the difficulty of mastering
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groff’s low-level typesetting requests.
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</p>
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<p>
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Broadly speaking, development will be channelled into two areas:
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<ul>
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<li><span class="diamond-bullet">♦</span>
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<a href="#core">core groff</a></li>
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<ul class="second-level">
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<li>– the typesetting backend and low-level formatting requests</li>
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</ul>
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<li><span class="diamond-bullet">♦</span>
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<a href="#usage">program usage</a></li>
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<ul class="second-level">
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<li>– general-purpose macro sets and manpages</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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Improvements and enhancements to other areas of the system will
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continue to form a routine part of groff’s growth, with active
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support for contributions provided by a team of groff mavens.
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</p>
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<h2 id="core">Core groff</h2>
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<h3 class="backend">The backend</h3>
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<p class="initial" style="margin-top: -.75em">
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Groff currently uses a greedy algorithm to format paragraphs one
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line at a time, but the
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Knuth-<span class="pkern">P</span>lass
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algorithm, implemented in
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<span class="mkern">T</span><span class="tex">e</span>X,
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Heirloom troff and elsewhere, optimizes linebreaks throughout whole
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paragraphs and achieves a more uniform typographic grey. One of
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the most exciting challenges facing groff will be implementing an
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improved formatting algorithm, the most likely candidate being
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Knuth-<span class="pkern">P</span>lass.
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It’s a big job, but with groff’s clean codebase and
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helpful community of experts, it is hoped additional developers will
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step forward and contribute their programming skills.
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</p>
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<p>
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Equally important will be instituting native support for
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<span class="mkern">T</span>rue<span class="mkern">T</span>ype,
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Open
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<span class="mkern">T</span>ype,
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and other
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non<span class="mkern">-T</span>ype1
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PostScript fonts, and improving Unicode support.
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</p>
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<h3 class="requests">Low-level formatting requests</h3>
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<p class="initial" style="margin-top: -.75em">
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Supplementary low-level formatting requests will continue to be
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added, and the behaviour of some existing requests reviewed, with
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care taken to maintain backward compatibility whenever modifications
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are deemed worthwhile.
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</p>
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<p>
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At the request level, groff’s use of integer arithmetic and
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linear evaluation of expressions hearkens back to the stone age.
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While not top-priority, these and other historical encumbrances
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(read “annoyances”) will be addressed—again, with
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a watchful eye toward backward compatibility.
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</p>
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<h2 id="usage">Program usage</h2>
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<h3>General-purpose macro sets</h3>
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<p class="initial" style="margin-top: -.75em">
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Macro sets form the primary user interface to groff. Well-designed,
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well-documented sets help make groff accessible to users—new
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users in particular. Adoption or rejection of the program is often
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based on whether available sets meet user needs without requiring
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mastery of low-level requests. Learning curve and ease of use are
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equally important.
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</p>
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<p>
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The most active area of groff development in the past decade
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has been in macro sets, with
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<a href="http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-01.html">mom</a>
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alone adding over 13,000 lines of code and 1MB of documentation to
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the project. Support for existing macro sets and the design and
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development of new ones will therefore play a significant role in
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groff’s future.
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</p>
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<h3 style="margin-top: .5em">Manpages</h3>
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<p class="initial" style="margin-top: -.75em">
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The need for Unix manuals to render cleanly to multiple output media
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favours structural rather than presentational markup, however the
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classical
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<span class="manpage">man</span>(7)
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macros remain almost exclusively presentational.
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<span class="manpage">mdoc</span>(7)
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provides a semantically superior alternative, but the use of
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<span class="manpage">man</span>(7)
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is deeply rooted in Unix.
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</p>
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<p>
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Future work on manpages will entail improving the semantic clarity
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of the
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<span class="manpage">man</span>(7)
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macros, decoupling them as much as possible from low-level
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presentational requests. The aim will be to ease conversion of
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manpages to markup languages that do not rely on groff for display
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and printing, e.g. XML, while preserving the full presentational
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richness of manpages processed with groff.
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</p>
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<p>
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Concurrent with work on
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<span class="manpage">man</span>(7),
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<span class="manpage">mdoc</span>(7)
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will be actively supported and its use promoted.
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</p>
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<p>
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To summarize, the goal of this two-pronged strategy is to foster
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manpage markup that:
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<ul>
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<li><span class="diamond-bullet">♦</span>
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renders cleanly to the terminal</li>
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<li><span class="diamond-bullet">♦</span>
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respects presentational markup when output to PostScript</li>
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<li><span class="diamond-bullet">♦</span>
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allows semantic analysis</li>
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<li><span class="diamond-bullet">♦</span>
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is portable</li>
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</ul>
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</p>
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<h2>Looking forward, looking back</h2>
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<p class="initial" style="margin-top: .5em">
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Backward compatibility with existing documents and usage will
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remain a top priority, as will avoiding feature-bloat and increased
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overheads. Groff’s viability and vitality rest as much on
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these as on forward-looking development.
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</p>
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<p>
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Finally, it is hoped that users of and contributors to groff will
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promote its use, providing unobtrusive advocacy to encourage more
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widespread adoption of the program, thereby increasing the pool of
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potential contributors and developers and furthering the cause of
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good typography.
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</p>
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<p class="copyright">
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<small>©2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.<br>
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51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, USA</small>
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</p>
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</div>
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</body>
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