[9fans] troff macros for typesetting books/longer texts

[tlaronde@polynum.com (tlaronde at polynum.com)]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:08:21PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
> 
> Most TeX users are actually latex users, not raw TeX so the
> TeXbook is not terribly useful. But there are good books on
> latex and there is a wealth of material online (& many
> packages that work with latex).  With TeXworks and TeXshop on
> the Mac writing latex docs has become more pleasant.
> 
> Still, it is much easier to learn to use troff (speaking as a
> user; never tried writing a macro package for it). A lot of
> things "just work".

I'm not an integrist, and as long as someone is comfortable with troff,
I don't see why he should switch to TeX. The converse is true.

But most of the "difficulties" with TeX come precisely because this is
not "plain" TeX: plain TeX (i.e. the macros from D.E. Knuth) just work
too. But TeX is hidden---see the comments I received at first: "why do
you want to make a TeX package? People only use LaTeX..."

And I think that I have the right to say that if some people had really
grasped TeX and al., they would never have done the mess the
distributions of the system are now.
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
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