Re: [9fans] troff book

[John Stalker <stalker@maths.tcd.ie>]

> Funnily enough, I've been trying to write my PhD thesis on Theoretical
> Physics using eqn|troff.
> In my life I've read so much shitty work written in LaTeX (i.e. nicely
> typeset, but ...) that, perhaps, I want to differentiate.
> And as I mentioned some time ago, writing math in the eqn language is
> just so much superior feeling for me, especially when typing unicode
> characters is possible.
>
> On the other hand, the truth is that the situation in plan9 troff/gs
> world is not good. Not good font coverage for math (e.g. bra-ket
> signs), not a suitable ps viewer, ...
>
> Ruda

Although this is getting a little off topic, I sympathize.  I think
we need to distinguish three things: the input languages, the general
architecture of the programs, and the typesetting engines themselves.
I think troff wins on the first two.  The language has its minor
annoyances, but fewer than TeX and its descendents.  The architecture
is also better.  Outsourcing equations and tables makes it easier,
though still quite hard, to figure out what is going wrong sometimes.
Also, LaTeX's use of .aux files in both input and output plays havoc
with make.  Where TeX wins is in the actual typesetting of equations.
That's one reason why I went back to LaTeX after using eqn|troff
for a few months.  The other reason is that using troff makes
collaboration nearly impossible, as no one else is willing to use it.

John


--
John Stalker
School of Mathematics
Trinity College Dublin
tel +353 1 896 1983
fax +353 1 896 2282