Pros and cons of groff vs TeX?
R!ch
Hi all,
I'm interested in writing a book, and I've decided that for best
results, I want to stick to either troff (actually groff), or use
TeX. Thing is, I don't know a great deal about TeX (tho' I do have
Knuth's book), and only a bit about troff, so I'd like to see what
the pros and cons of each are, assuming that I don't intend to do
lots of math typesetting. No intention to start a flame war, honest!
--
R!ch
If it ain't analogue, it ain't music.
#include <disclaimer.h> \\|// - ?
(o o)
/==================================oOOo=(_)=oOOo========\
| Richard Teer richar...@uk.sun.com |
| |
| |
| WWW: www.rkdltd.demon.co.uk |
| .oooO |
| ( ) Oooo. |
\===================================\ (==( )==========/
\_) ) /
(_/
John Nurick
>I'm interested in writing a book, and I've decided that for best
>results, I want to stick to either troff (actually groff), or use
>TeX.
For best results, ask the publishers how they want it.
John
I dislocated my e-mail address, and the doctor says it will be
six months before I can see a specialist.
Andrew Maier
>
>I'm interested in writing a book, and I've decided that for best
>results, I want to stick to either troff (actually groff), or use
>Knuth's book), and only a bit about troff, so I'd like to see what
>the pros and cons of each are, assuming that I don't intend to do
>lots of math typesetting. No intention to start a flame war, honest!
>
I suppose it depends what you want. (Stupid remark). TeX is
extremly good at doing typesetting and has beautiful hausekeeping
techniques for numbering figures, tables, equations etc. But it
might be harder to learn.
But if you want to try TeX I would recommend LaTeX instead, since
it is a mcro-package built on TeX that has a lot of predefined
styles an the like ( sort of ms macros for groff). Raw TeX is
fairly hard, as you have to all the work your-self (like only
using troff primitives and not using any macro package).
Then of course I would not recommend the book by Knuth, but Leslie
Lamport's book on Latex (and the LaTeX compagnion)
Another advantage of LateX is that it is wildly available on just
about any platform. It's disadvantages are that it is relativley
large, and resource demanding.
Obviously I know more about LaTeX then about troff. Is there any
good (online) documentation for groff, esp for the divers macro
packages?
Andrew
--
Andrew Maier
Andrew...@cern.ch
God is real, unless declared integer
R!ch
On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, Andrew Maier wrote:
> But if you want to try TeX I would recommend LaTeX instead, since
> it is a mcro-package built on TeX that has a lot of predefined
> styles an the like ( sort of ms macros for groff). Raw TeX is
> fairly hard, as you have to all the work your-self (like only
> using troff primitives and not using any macro package).
>
> Then of course I would not recommend the book by Knuth, but Leslie
> Lamport's book on Latex (and the LaTeX compagnion)
I've heard of LaTex, but I haven't read Lamport's book. I might
order a copy, if only to browse...
> Another advantage of LateX is that it is wildly available on just
> about any platform. It's disadvantages are that it is relativley
> large, and resource demanding.
Resources aren't an issue with me: I'll be using my twin processor
SPARCstation 20 with 128MB RAM. :-) Any idea where I can get LaTex
for Solaris 2.x on SPARC from? Preferably precompiled.
> Obviously I know more about LaTeX then about troff. Is there any
> good (online) documentation for groff, esp for the divers macro
> packages?
One place I know of is http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/groff/index.html
For the macros, man <macro>, eg man ms, may give the desired results.
W. Richard Stevens
> For best results, ask the publishers how they want it.
No. Publishers will ask for MS Word or something similar. If you're
going to produce camera-ready copy (often PostScript files today) then
the publisher should not care. Mine don't and both have books generated
from many, many software packages. Publishers may have a style sheet,
or something similar, that they want you to follow, but that's different
from how you generate that style.
Rich Stevens
Patrick TJ McPhee
In article <Pine.SOL.3.96.971111170039.27400k-100000@mill>,
R!ch <rich...@farn-home.uk.sun.com> wrote:
% I'm interested in writing a book, and I've decided that for best
% results, I want to stick to either troff (actually groff), or use
% TeX.
This is all highly subjective. I used troff heavily for a few years in
the mid-to-late '80s, and I've used TeX heavily since about 1990. I
prefer TeX.
Pros of troff:
if you need to run the thing in a pipeline, this is your baby.
Table processing is simpler (but I think gtbl can write TeX output...)
Pros of TeX:
common macro packages are more comprehensible
macros are easier to write
math gives better results and is easier to write
implicit paragraphs
font handling is more sophisticated
I would do a chapter or so in each and see which I felt more comfortable
with. That's essentially what I did when I started using TeX.
--
Patrick TJ McPhee
East York Canada
pt...@interlog.com
Andrew Maier
On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, R!ch wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, Andrew Maier wrote:
>
> >
> > Then of course I would not recommend the book by Knuth, but Leslie
> > Lamport's book on Latex (and the LaTeX compagnion)
>
> I've heard of LaTex, but I haven't read Lamport's book. I might
> order a copy, if only to browse...
Of course LaTeX limits yourself in predefining some styles, but if you are
the author and not the designer of a the book you should not care that
much. You still have a lot of flexibility.
>
> > Another advantage of LateX is that it is wildly available on just
> > about any platform. It's disadvantages are that it is relativley
> > large, and resource demanding.
>
> Resources aren't an issue with me: I'll be using my twin processor
> SPARCstation 20 with 128MB RAM. :-) Any idea where I can get LaTex
> for Solaris 2.x on SPARC from? Preferably precompiled.
>
Try one of the ctan (Comprehensive TeX archive network (or so)) archives.
They all mirror them selfs and they have everything you will probably ever
need to get one of them is ftp://ftp.dante.de. There is also one in the UK
For UNIX there is tetex, which might also be available precompiled.
Despite the low version number (0.4) it is very mature.
Just checked in ftp://ftp.dante.de/pub/tex/systems/unix/teTeX/distrib/binaries
you can find some Solaris binaries. But these are only the actual binaries
you will need the support files as well. There is a config script which
works pretty well (at least for linux), so it might be the best to get the
whole distrib directory and build form scratch. You will need just about
everything in distrib anyway.
> > Obviously I know more about LaTeX then about troff. Is there any
> > good (online) documentation for groff, esp for the divers macro
> > packages?
>
> One place I know of is http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/groff/index.html
> For the macros, man <macro>, eg man ms, may give the desired results.
>
>
Thanks for the pointer
R!ch
On Thu, 13 Nov 1997, John Nurick wrote:
> Yes, if. The original poster said he was "interested in writing
> a book", which made me think that the question whether it should
> be a CRC or document file had still to be addressed - and
> publishers deserve a say in that!
This is true, but there's no way I'm writing a book using crappy
Micro$oft products! I guess if my book ever gets off the ground
I'll need a publisher that accepts PostScript CRC.
John Nurick
On 12 Nov 1997 13:02:18 GMT, rste...@noao.edu (W. Richard
Stevens) wrote:
>> For best results, ask the publishers how they want it.
>No. Publishers will ask for MS Word or something similar. If you're
>going to produce camera-ready copy (often PostScript files today) then
>the publisher should not care.
Yes, if. The original poster said he was "interested in writing
a book", which made me think that the question whether it should
be a CRC or document file had still to be addressed - and
publishers deserve a say in that!
John
Chris Maden
In article <Pine.SOL.3.96.971111170039.27400k-100000@mill> R!ch
<rich...@farn-home.uk.sun.com> writes:
I'm interested in writing a book, and I've decided that for best
results, I want to stick to either troff (actually groff), or use
TeX. Thing is, I don't know a great deal about TeX (tho' I do have
Knuth's book), and only a bit about troff, so I'd like to see what
the pros and cons of each are, assuming that I don't intend to do
lots of math typesetting. No intention to start a flame war,
honest!
Both are *typesetting* languages. For writing a book, especially if
you aren't already familiar with a language, I would strongly
recommend a semantic language for authoring. SGML, LaTeX, or Word or
Frame with rigorous use of styles (or tags), will allow you to focus
primarily on the content of the book, and still allow you to produce
whatever format the publisher wants.
The first question is, do you have a publisher selected? Do their
tools group a favor, and use their preferred format. You will make
many friends this way.
Second, if the first does not determine a format, is there a format in
which you feel comfortable, that produces typographically acceptable
results? (Note: I do not consider Word one of these formats.
However, with rigorous use of styles, the file will contain sufficient
information for translation into such a format.) If so, while
learning something new is always good, it may take more time than it's
worth to produce this book.
Finally, if you don't have a publisher-mandated format or a Format of
Choice, learn a semantic one. If you're labelling things for what
they *are* instead of what they look like, you can adapt to a
publisher's house style far more readily than if you've kerned,
leaded, and italicized everything to your own idea of perfection.
SGML or XML is the richest format, but it is fairly difficult to
learn, initially.
LaTeX can be learned pretty quickly from Lamport's book, and
identifies things like chapters, sections, and emphasis, so they can
be extracted if you need to convert. It also allows you to use native
TeX to tweak typographical things, though this reduces the
portability.
Frame is a good production tool, but is expensive for individual
users. But both it and Word, if tags (Frame) or styles (Word) are
used, can be converted into other formats.
Right now, I'm using XML for authoring, and converting into tagged MIF
(Frame's ASCII format) with Jade (<URL:http://www.jclark.com/jade/>),
and letting Frame handle the typographic niceties.
HTH,
Chris
Tools Guy @ O'Reilly
--
<!NOTATION SGML.Geek PUBLIC "-//Anonymous//NOTATION SGML Geek//EN">
<!ENTITY crism PUBLIC "-//O'Reilly//NONSGML Christopher R. Maden//EN"
"<URL>http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/ <TEL>+1.617.499.7487
<USMAIL>90 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA" NDATA SGML.Geek>
Patrick TJ McPhee
In article <Pine.SOL.3.96.971112114751.27400v-100000@mill>,
R!ch <rich...@farn-home.uk.sun.com> wrote:
% I've heard of LaTex, but I haven't read Lamport's book. I might
% order a copy, if only to browse...
A better book is Kopka and Daly, An Introduction to LaTeX, which is
a translation of the best German book on LaTeX.
% Any idea where I can get LaTex
% for Solaris 2.x on SPARC from? Preferably precompiled.
ftp.tex.ac.uk
tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX
Read the READMEs and it's fairly simple to install. You can also check
http://www.tug.org for information about getting TeX and related software
on CD.
Good luck.
Magnus Lie Hetland
Chris Maden wrote:
>
> In article <Pine.SOL.3.96.971111170039.27400k-100000@mill> R!ch
> <rich...@farn-home.uk.sun.com> writes:
> Right now, I'm using XML for authoring, and converting into tagged MIF
> (Frame's ASCII format) with Jade (<URL:http://www.jclark.com/jade/>),
> and letting Frame handle the typographic niceties.
>
I like XML a lot, but I haven't quite figured out DSSSL or how to
use Jade... For instance, how do you produce MIF files with Jade?
Have you written your own backend for it?
> HTH,
> Chris
> Tools Guy @ O'Reilly
> --
> <!NOTATION SGML.Geek PUBLIC "-//Anonymous//NOTATION SGML Geek//EN">
> <!ENTITY crism PUBLIC "-//O'Reilly//NONSGML Christopher R. Maden//EN"
> "<URL>http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/ <TEL>+1.617.499.7487
> <USMAIL>90 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA" NDATA SGML.Geek>
--
Magnus
Lie "Intelligent, me? Well, I guess
Hetland I could pass the Turing test..."
Chris Maden
In article <346DE905...@idi.ntnu.no> Magnus Lie Hetland
<m...@idi.ntnu.no> writes:
I like XML a lot, but I haven't quite figured out DSSSL or how to
use Jade... For instance, how do you produce MIF files with Jade?
Have you written your own backend for it?
No. There is a MIF back-end in beta from Isogen
(<URL:http://www.isogen.com/>), but it doesn't produce tagged MIF.
I'm (ab)using the SGML back-end to produce tagged MIF; for a sample of
a somewhat out-of-date approach, see
<URL:http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/sgml2mif/>.
-Chris