[9fans] troff book

[9fans] troff book

[hugo rivera]

Hi,
soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use troff. I
previously wrote some documents with it, mostly with the ms macro,
which I think I'll use for the thesis. Can you advice some book about
troff with some introduction on how to write troff macros?
Saludos y gracias,

--
Hugo

Re: [9fans] troff book

[simon softnet]

Hi,
I would suggest the -mpm macros:
https://131.106.3.253/publications/compsystems/1989/spr_kernighan.pdf

It is basically the same as -ms.
You can build it in plan 9 troff and you can actually use the
resulting binary with heirloom troff as well.

Best of luck,
Simon.

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:02 PM, hugo rivera <uair00@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use troff. I
> previously wrote some documents with it, mostly with the ms macro,
> which I think I'll use for the thesis. Can you advice some book about
> troff with some introduction on how to write troff macros?
> Saludos y gracias,
>
> --
> Hugo
>

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Aharon Robbins]

> Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 14:02:29 +0100
> From: hugo rivera <uair00@gmail.com>
> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
> Subject: [9fans] troff book
>
> Hi,
> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use troff. I
> previously wrote some documents with it, mostly with the ms macro,
> which I think I'll use for the thesis. Can you advice some book about
> troff with some introduction on how to write troff macros?
> Saludos y gracias,
> --
> Hugo

See http://www.troff.org for a list of books on troff and lots of other
related material.  Good luck with your thesis!

Arnold

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Gabriel Díaz López de la llave]

Hello

This one could be a bit basic for what you want:

http://oreilly.com/openbook/utp/

But a groff version source is public, so you might find it useful.

slds.

gabi


2011/12/2 Aharon Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com>:
>> Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 14:02:29 +0100
>> From: hugo rivera <uair00@gmail.com>
>> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
>> Subject: [9fans] troff book
>>
>> Hi,
>> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use troff. I
>> previously wrote some documents with it, mostly with the ms macro,
>> which I think I'll use for the thesis. Can you advice some book about
>> troff with some introduction on how to write troff macros?
>> Saludos y gracias,
>> --
>> Hugo
>
> See http://www.troff.org for a list of books on troff and lots of other
> related material.  Good luck with your thesis!
>
> Arnold
>

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Steve Simon]

By far the best books on troff (IMHO) are the pair by Gehani and Lally,
Document Formatting and Typesetting on the Unix system, volume 1 and 2.

They are out of print but available from alibris.com and somtimes on
amazon new & used.

-Steve

Re: [9fans] troff book

[hugo rivera]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll have a look at some of those books.

2011/12/2 Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net>:
> By far the best books on troff (IMHO) are the pair by Gehani and Lally,
> Document Formatting and Typesetting on the Unix system, volume 1 and 2.
>
> They are out of print but available from alibris.com and somtimes on
> amazon new & used.
>
> -Steve
>



--
Hugo

Re: [9fans] troff book

[John Floren]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 5:02 AM, hugo rivera <uair00@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use troff. I
> previously wrote some documents with it, mostly with the ms macro,
> which I think I'll use for the thesis. Can you advice some book about
> troff with some introduction on how to write troff macros?
> Saludos y gracias,
>
> --
> Hugo
>

Hi Hugo

Having recently written my thesis, I strongly recommend using LaTeX. I
love troff, I always enjoy writing short papers (such as my IWP9
submissions) in troff, but I think I would have gone insane writing my
thesis without LaTeX. BibTeX alone is a huge incentive for me. Plus,
it's quite possible that your school may already have a sample LaTeX
thesis for you to work from; in my case, we had a style definition
file (.sty) to include in the thesis source, and then a sample
document using it.

KerTeX is pretty neat, so if you want to write your thesis on Plan 9
it's a good option.


John

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

I have written books both in latex and in troff.
It's a nightmare, no matter in what, to get things like
indexes and tocs right.

Doing it in troff required me to write a few scripts to
generate some of the tables.

Doing it in latex required me to write a few scripts to
fix up things not handled well by latex (I'm sorry, but don't
remember which ones were the actual problems, it was long ago).

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Австин Ким]

IMHO, for anything on the scale of a doctoral dissertation, a better solution would be to develop a native Plan 9 C port of TeX, METAFONT, and LaTeX for Plan 9 from Bell Labs.  Troff is ill-suited for typesetting mathematics, as anyone who has tried to use troff to typeset formulas and equations of any complexity will readily attest.

All the best.

Отправлено с iPhone

Dec 2, 2011, в 13:00, Francisco J Ballesteros <nemo@lsub.org> написал(а):

> I have written books both in latex and in troff.
> It's a nightmare, no matter in what, to get things like
> indexes and tocs right.
> 
> Doing it in troff required me to write a few scripts to
> generate some of the tables.
> 
> Doing it in latex required me to write a few scripts to
> fix up things not handled well by latex (I'm sorry, but don't
> remember which ones were the actual problems, it was long ago).
> 
> 

Re: [9fans] troff book

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 01:13:37PM -0500, ?????? ??? wrote:
> IMHO, for anything on the scale of a doctoral dissertation, a better solution would be to develop a native Plan 9 C port of TeX, METAFONT, and LaTeX for Plan 9 from Bell Labs.  Troff is ill-suited for typesetting mathematics, as anyone who has tried to use troff to typeset formulas and equations of any complexity will readily attest.

Hum? "a native Plan 9 C port of TeX, METAFONT etc." ---LaTeX is a set of
macros, that's all, so is is usable with TeX...---is already done:

http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html

--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] troff book

[ron minnich]

I've done papers and "books" in latex forever (don't want to say how
long). At the time, I was a troff refugee, having gotten annoyed with
troff on unix after a few years.

when I was at lsub last may, I got used to their nice scripts and such
and now would much rather do short papers in troff than anything else.
My new rule is < 20 pages, < 1 chapter, no need for complex math, do
troff. Else, do latex. Part of the reason is being that the open
source community has, as usual, come up with 50 ways to do anything in
latex, most incompatible with the other, and in many cases latex and
pdflatex are mutually exclusive: latex and pdflatex either fail to
produce the same output, or, worse, can not accept the same input.
tex/latex, once clean and small, are now a beast, like unto most other
open source stuff nowadays. Troff has the virtue of having changed
little in that time.

Now if someone can do a set of IEEE macros for troff ....

Irony alert! The Bell Labs journal now requires submissions in *word*.

ron

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

Could be worse, they might require using IE on Windows 7 to submit them.
Or perhaps they already do?

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 7:16 PM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> Irony alert! The Bell Labs journal now requires submissions in *word*.

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> Could be worse, they might require using IE on Windows 7 to submit them.
> Or perhaps they already do?

Silverlight runs on Macs, too.

Re: [9fans] troff book

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 10:16:26AM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
>[...]
> tex/latex, once clean and small, are now a beast,

Uh! There are days when I wonder why I have done kerTeX... (well, I know
why: because _I_ use it!). Do you know that kerTeX has everything,
including BibTeX (hell to fix!) and can "do" LaTeX and also AMSTeX and
"Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Sciences" (based on LaTeX) and so on.

And it is small since I have sent 99% of the crap to the biggest storage
till now and forever: /dev/null.

There was even a bunch of connections last week because somebody was
looking for TeX on phones... (I don't know why, but the community marvel
named TeXlive didn't seem to be the first choice in this case...)

http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html

-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] troff book

[John Floren]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:29 AM,  <tlaronde@polynum.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 10:16:26AM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
>>[...]
>> tex/latex, once clean and small, are now a beast,
>
> Uh! There are days when I wonder why I have done kerTeX... (well, I know
> why: because _I_ use it!). Do you know that kerTeX has everything,
> including BibTeX (hell to fix!) and can "do" LaTeX and also AMSTeX and
> "Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Sciences" (based on LaTeX) and so on.
>
> And it is small since I have sent 99% of the crap to the biggest storage
> till now and forever: /dev/null.

kerTeX is awesome! Anybody doing typesetting on Plan 9 (or even on
Linux/*BSD) should try grab it.


> There was even a bunch of connections last week because somebody was
> looking for TeX on phones... (I don't know why, but the community marvel
> named TeXlive didn't seem to be the first choice in this case...)
>

Ah, I think that was due to me... I read
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264341 and suggested that they
take a look at kerTeX :)


John

Re: [9fans] troff book

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 10:45:24AM -0800, John Floren wrote:
>
> > There was even a bunch of connections last week because somebody was
> > looking for TeX on phones... (I don't know why, but the community marvel
> > named TeXlive didn't seem to be the first choice in this case...)
> >
>
> Ah, I think that was due to me... I read
> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264341 and suggested that they
> take a look at kerTeX :)

Yes, you were one of the two (the other one has identified himself
now... ;)). [I suspected this from the initials of the author of the
mail.]

And for others, BTW, if LaTeX sure works, it's because John was
brave enough to try and not to give up after initial errors.

Thanks!
--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] troff book

[simon softnet]

I have written my bachelor's thesis (80 pages with graphs, tables,
diagrams, equations, etc..) in pure troff -me.
It went as smooth as I could ever hope for.
LaTeX is much more difficult to use, IMO.

Simon.

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:02 PM,  <tlaronde@polynum.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 10:45:24AM -0800, John Floren wrote:
>>
>> > There was even a bunch of connections last week because somebody was
>> > looking for TeX on phones... (I don't know why, but the community marvel
>> > named TeXlive didn't seem to be the first choice in this case...)
>> >
>>
>> Ah, I think that was due to me... I read
>> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264341 and suggested that they
>> take a look at kerTeX :)
>
> Yes, you were one of the two (the other one has identified himself
> now... ;)). [I suspected this from the initials of the author of the
> mail.]
>
> And for others, BTW, if LaTeX sure works, it's because John was
> brave enough to try and not to give up after initial errors.
>
> Thanks!
> --
>        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
>                      http://www.kergis.com/
> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
>

Re: [9fans] troff book

[simon softnet]

By the way, I am currently forced to use LaTeX.
It's because formulas look nicer, and also because my current
supervisor asks me to.

I was thinking of writing a program that accepts a file formated with
-ms or -me macros and translates it to LaTeX equivalent macros. This
way, I would hopefully have the best of both worlds: the elegance of
troff syntax and the neatness of TeX output.
Is anyone interested in helping me out?

Simon.

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 11:24 PM, simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have written my bachelor's thesis (80 pages with graphs, tables,
> diagrams, equations, etc..) in pure troff -me.
> It went as smooth as I could ever hope for.
> LaTeX is much more difficult to use, IMO.
>
> Simon.
>
> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:02 PM,  <tlaronde@polynum.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 10:45:24AM -0800, John Floren wrote:
>>>
>>> > There was even a bunch of connections last week because somebody was
>>> > looking for TeX on phones... (I don't know why, but the community marvel
>>> > named TeXlive didn't seem to be the first choice in this case...)
>>> >
>>>
>>> Ah, I think that was due to me... I read
>>> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264341 and suggested that they
>>> take a look at kerTeX :)
>>
>> Yes, you were one of the two (the other one has identified himself
>> now... ;)). [I suspected this from the initials of the author of the
>> mail.]
>>
>> And for others, BTW, if LaTeX sure works, it's because John was
>> brave enough to try and not to give up after initial errors.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> --
>>        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
>>                      http://www.kergis.com/
>> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
>>

Re: [9fans] troff book

[hugo rivera]

I think I'll reconsider using troff for my thesis, because some math
is sure to come across. But learning more about troff is indeed
useful.

2011/12/2 simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com>:
> By the way, I am currently forced to use LaTeX.
> It's because formulas look nicer, and also because my current
> supervisor asks me to.
>
> I was thinking of writing a program that accepts a file formated with
> -ms or -me macros and translates it to LaTeX equivalent macros. This
> way, I would hopefully have the best of both worlds: the elegance of
> troff syntax and the neatness of TeX output.
> Is anyone interested in helping me out?
>
> Simon.
>
> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 11:24 PM, simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have written my bachelor's thesis (80 pages with graphs, tables,
>> diagrams, equations, etc..) in pure troff -me.
>> It went as smooth as I could ever hope for.
>> LaTeX is much more difficult to use, IMO.
>>
>> Simon.
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:02 PM,  <tlaronde@polynum.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 10:45:24AM -0800, John Floren wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > There was even a bunch of connections last week because somebody was
>>>> > looking for TeX on phones... (I don't know why, but the community marvel
>>>> > named TeXlive didn't seem to be the first choice in this case...)
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> Ah, I think that was due to me... I read
>>>> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264341 and suggested that they
>>>> take a look at kerTeX :)
>>>
>>> Yes, you were one of the two (the other one has identified himself
>>> now... ;)). [I suspected this from the initials of the author of the
>>> mail.]
>>>
>>> And for others, BTW, if LaTeX sure works, it's because John was
>>> brave enough to try and not to give up after initial errors.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> --
>>>        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
>>>                      http://www.kergis.com/
>>> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
>>>
>



-- 
Hugo

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Akshat Kumar]

I've written some math papers in troff. I spent less time doing math and
more time tinkering with troff, to get things to show up properly. LaTeX looks
prettier still, but handling UTF-8 in the source goes a long way towards
legibility (especially if you have to come back to it after a while).

I also ported Lout (contrib/akumar/lout.tgz) to Plan 9. It looks even prettier,
and the source files end up looking much prettier than LaTeX. However,
there is no UTF-8 support.


ak

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:42 PM, hugo rivera <uair00@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think I'll reconsider using troff for my thesis, because some math
> is sure to come across. But learning more about troff is indeed
> useful.
>
> 2011/12/2 simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com>:
>> By the way, I am currently forced to use LaTeX.
>> It's because formulas look nicer, and also because my current
>> supervisor asks me to.
>>
>> I was thinking of writing a program that accepts a file formated with
>> -ms or -me macros and translates it to LaTeX equivalent macros. This
>> way, I would hopefully have the best of both worlds: the elegance of
>> troff syntax and the neatness of TeX output.
>> Is anyone interested in helping me out?
>>
>> Simon.
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 11:24 PM, simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I have written my bachelor's thesis (80 pages with graphs, tables,
>>> diagrams, equations, etc..) in pure troff -me.
>>> It went as smooth as I could ever hope for.
>>> LaTeX is much more difficult to use, IMO.
>>>
>>> Simon.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:02 PM,  <tlaronde@polynum.com> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 10:45:24AM -0800, John Floren wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> > There was even a bunch of connections last week because somebody was
>>>>> > looking for TeX on phones... (I don't know why, but the community marvel
>>>>> > named TeXlive didn't seem to be the first choice in this case...)
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>> Ah, I think that was due to me... I read
>>>>> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264341 and suggested that they
>>>>> take a look at kerTeX :)
>>>>
>>>> Yes, you were one of the two (the other one has identified himself
>>>> now... ;)). [I suspected this from the initials of the author of the
>>>> mail.]
>>>>
>>>> And for others, BTW, if LaTeX sure works, it's because John was
>>>> brave enough to try and not to give up after initial errors.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>> --
>>>>        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
>>>>                      http://www.kergis.com/
>>>> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
>>>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Hugo
>

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Gabriel Díaz López de la llave]

Hello

You might be interested in this:

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/tr2latex

slds.

gabi


2011/12/2 simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com>:
> By the way, I am currently forced to use LaTeX.
> It's because formulas look nicer, and also because my current
> supervisor asks me to.
>
> I was thinking of writing a program that accepts a file formated with
> -ms or -me macros and translates it to LaTeX equivalent macros. This
> way, I would hopefully have the best of both worlds: the elegance of
> troff syntax and the neatness of TeX output.
> Is anyone interested in helping me out?
>
> Simon.
>
> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 11:24 PM, simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have written my bachelor's thesis (80 pages with graphs, tables,
>> diagrams, equations, etc..) in pure troff -me.
>> It went as smooth as I could ever hope for.
>> LaTeX is much more difficult to use, IMO.
>>
>> Simon.
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:02 PM,  <tlaronde@polynum.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 10:45:24AM -0800, John Floren wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > There was even a bunch of connections last week because somebody was
>>>> > looking for TeX on phones... (I don't know why, but the community marvel
>>>> > named TeXlive didn't seem to be the first choice in this case...)
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> Ah, I think that was due to me... I read
>>>> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264341 and suggested that they
>>>> take a look at kerTeX :)
>>>
>>> Yes, you were one of the two (the other one has identified himself
>>> now... ;)). [I suspected this from the initials of the author of the
>>> mail.]
>>>
>>> And for others, BTW, if LaTeX sure works, it's because John was
>>> brave enough to try and not to give up after initial errors.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> --
>>>        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
>>>                      http://www.kergis.com/
>>> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
>>>
>

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Charles Forsyth]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1963 bytes --]

Having read the replies, I thought I'd offer slightly different advice.
You are writing a dissertation. The formatting just needs to be what
satisfies your university's format requirements, which usually are
broad. I'd be surprised if they required an index for instance. Don't
waste time and effort on the formatting. For one thing, few people
will actually read your dissertation, unless what you're doing is
stupendous (and then they won't care about the format): your proof-reader
(you have got one, haven't you?), your supervisor, your examiners,
and ... that's usually about it. (Your parents will look at it.) If your
supervisor
supervisor can start fussing about the prettiness of (say) your equations
and tables rather than their content, you can reasonably suggest to him
that you
would appear to be finished. Just do a few test runs first of typical
equations
just to check that the output is at least reasonable.

Much later, when your topic turns out to be important again, someone like
me will remember seeing your dissertation mentioned, or find it through
Google^,
but I can assure you that by we'll still be more interested in the content.

I'd use the system with which you're most familiar. You don't want the
added distractions of trying to debug the typesetting software, and when
something goes wrong, it's much easier if you've used it before. (In my own
case, the night of the submission deadline, when I came to do
the final copy, I discovered that the troff installation Had Somehow Changed
and the output was completely messed up. Unfortunately that predated Plan 9
and yesterday(1),
but fortunately it's easy to check each stage of the pipeline, and
I could work out where to look for the change to undo.

If you're using troff, pick up a copy of refer from contrib.

On 2 December 2011 13:02, hugo rivera <uair00@gmail.com> wrote:

> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use ...

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2565 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] troff book

[simon softnet]

It's funny how this reply came at the right time for me.
I'm writing a thesis proposal and was wasting all this time trying out
different latex templates.

Simon.

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Charles Forsyth
<charles.forsyth@gmail.com> wrote:
> Having read the replies, I thought I'd offer slightly different advice.
> You are writing a dissertation. The formatting just needs to be what
> satisfies your university's format requirements, which usually are
> broad. I'd be surprised if they required an index for instance. Don't
> waste time and effort on the formatting. For one thing, few people
> will actually read your dissertation, unless what you're doing is
> stupendous (and then they won't care about the format): your proof-reader
> (you have got one, haven't you?), your supervisor, your examiners,
> and ... that's usually about it. (Your parents will look at it.) If your
> supervisor
> supervisor can start fussing about the prettiness of (say) your equations
> and tables rather than their content, you can reasonably suggest to him that
> you
> would appear to be finished. Just do a few test runs first of typical
> equations
> just to check that the output is at least reasonable.
>
> Much later, when your topic turns out to be important again, someone like
> me will remember seeing your dissertation mentioned, or find it through
> Google^,
> but I can assure you that by we'll still be more interested in the content.
>
> I'd use the system with which you're most familiar. You don't want the
> added distractions of trying to debug the typesetting software, and when
> something goes wrong, it's much easier if you've used it before. (In my own
> case, the night of the submission deadline, when I came to do
> the final copy, I discovered that the troff installation Had Somehow Changed
> and the output was completely messed up. Unfortunately that predated Plan 9
> and yesterday(1),
> but fortunately it's easy to check each stage of the pipeline, and
> I could work out where to look for the change to undo.
>
> If you're using troff, pick up a copy of refer from contrib.
>
> On 2 December 2011 13:02, hugo rivera <uair00@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use ...
>
>

Re: [9fans] troff book

[John Stalker]

As a thesis advisor myself, though not of this thesis, I would say that
the advice below might or might not be correct, depending on field of
study.  I have some affection for troff, but TeX and its progeny really
do produce much nicer looking equations.  In a field where equations
are usually simple and there are only one or two per page there is no
reason not to use eqn|troff.  In something like Mathematics or Theoretical
Physics, where equations can be quite complex and are everywhere, you
really want to use some TeX variant.  Using eqn|troff would be like using
MS Comic Sans for the text.  Yes, the content is the same, but the form
would make you look eccentric or incompetent.  It's true the few people
read theses, but that's no reason to piss them off unnecessarily, since
they decide whether you get a degree or not.

> Having read the replies, I thought I'd offer slightly different advice.
> You are writing a dissertation. The formatting just needs to be what
> satisfies your university's format requirements, which usually are
> broad. I'd be surprised if they required an index for instance. Don't
> waste time and effort on the formatting. For one thing, few people
> will actually read your dissertation, unless what you're doing is
> stupendous (and then they won't care about the format): your proof-reader
> (you have got one, haven't you?), your supervisor, your examiners,
> and ... that's usually about it. (Your parents will look at it.) If your
> supervisor
> supervisor can start fussing about the prettiness of (say) your equations
> and tables rather than their content, you can reasonably suggest to him
> that you
> would appear to be finished. Just do a few test runs first of typical
> equations
> just to check that the output is at least reasonable.
>
> Much later, when your topic turns out to be important again, someone like
> me will remember seeing your dissertation mentioned, or find it through
> Google^,
> but I can assure you that by we'll still be more interested in the content.
>
> I'd use the system with which you're most familiar. You don't want the
> added distractions of trying to debug the typesetting software, and when
> something goes wrong, it's much easier if you've used it before. (In my own
> case, the night of the submission deadline, when I came to do
> the final copy, I discovered that the troff installation Had Somehow Changed
> and the output was completely messed up. Unfortunately that predated Plan 9
> and yesterday(1),
> but fortunately it's easy to check each stage of the pipeline, and
> I could work out where to look for the change to undo.
>
> If you're using troff, pick up a copy of refer from contrib.
--
John Stalker
School of Mathematics
Trinity College Dublin
tel +353 1 896 1983
fax +353 1 896 2282

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Rudolf Sykora]

Hello,

On 12 December 2011 11:28, John Stalker <stalker@maths.tcd.ie> wrote:
> As a thesis advisor myself, though not of this thesis, I would say that
> the advice below might or might not be correct, depending on field of
> study.  I have some affection for troff, but TeX and its progeny really
> do produce much nicer looking equations.  In a field where equations
> are usually simple and there are only one or two per page there is no
> reason not to use eqn|troff.  In something like Mathematics or Theoretical
> Physics, where equations can be quite complex and are everywhere, you
> really want to use some TeX variant.  Using eqn|troff would be like using
> MS Comic Sans for the text.  Yes, the content is the same, but the form
> would make you look eccentric or incompetent.  It's true the few people
> read theses, but that's no reason to piss them off unnecessarily, since
> they decide whether you get a degree or not.

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

Re: [9fans] troff book

[John Stalker]

> 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

Re: [9fans] troff book

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 01:04:47PM +0100, John Stalker wrote:
>[...]
> 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.

LaTeX != TeX.

LaTeX is another example of "best is good' foe" ("Le mieux est l'ennemi
du bien"). There are some constructions that plain TeX---the set of
macros designed by D.E. Knuth---does not help to produce. But LaTeX has
not only eased some common things, but built a kind of huge framework
that render finding "what does what" difficult if not impossible.

If it takes more time to learn how to use (superficially) an extension
riding piggy-back on an engine than learning how the engine works and
how to program it, there is a problem.

All what LaTeX does, finally, for typesetting is what TeX does. One can
do mathematics with TeX using plain TeX and the AMS supplementary fonts.

It took me far less time to master Donald E. Knuth's Typesetting series
than to try to read the LaTeX documentation. And I'm now totally
autonomous. And that's probably why I was able to do kerTeX: I didn't
care about the multi-mouths Hydra shouting "GPL!" in front of the
community's TeX "organised" in the Augean Stables. Wizardry and Magic
disappear as soon as one knows the tricks.

And if you read---carefully...-the TeXbook, you know all you has to
know. The missing part is the "administration" of the software: how to
compile and install. But this is what kerTeX is for: give easily people
the software, having then just to use it according to D.E.K.'s books.
--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Charles Forsyth]

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come to think of it, contemporary layout restrictions did rob us of
Fermat's own proof of his theorem.
more seriously, yes, of course you're going to have to select a formatting
system that can
cope with what you need to express. equations are one thing. the things
that never, ever work well
for me in computer-assisted typesetting are drawing, unless they are very
simple or i am very lucky.

On 12 December 2011 10:28, John Stalker <stalker@maths.tcd.ie> wrote:

>  In something like Mathematics

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Re: [9fans] troff book

[John Stalker]

> come to think of it, contemporary layout restrictions did rob us of
> Fermat's own proof of his theorem.
> more seriously, yes, of course you're going to have to select a formatting
> system that can
> cope with what you need to express. equations are one thing. the things
> that never, ever work well
> for me in computer-assisted typesetting are drawing, unless they are very
> simple or i am very lucky.

For drawing, nothing beats rolling your own PostScript.  Which leads
me to a complaint about both TeX and troff.  Both will happily typeset
whole PostScript documents, but extreme trickery is needed to get them
to produce fragments which can be inserted into hand rolled diagrams.

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

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Michael Kerpan]

Plain TeX (which is what KerTeX offers by default) doesn't seem that
complex, but it does have the disadvantage of not offering much of a
separation between format and content. Both LaTeX and some of the more
sophisticated troff macro packages do a better job of allowing
"structured" editing.

Also, what level of font support is available in KerTeX and Plan 9
troff? I'm assuming that neither offers the level of "plug and play"
support for modern Opentype fonts that can be found in XeTeX and
Heirloom troff, but how are they otherwise?

Mike

Re: [9fans] troff book

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 09:10:44AM -0500, Michael Kerpan wrote:
> Plain TeX (which is what KerTeX offers by default) doesn't seem that
> complex, but it does have the disadvantage of not offering much of a
> separation between format and content. Both LaTeX and some of the more
> sophisticated troff macro packages do a better job of allowing
> "structured" editing.

What I mean is that if you know how it works, you can build your own
macro set allowing "structured editing"---that's indeed what I do:
MisTeX (my own macro set) does some apparent structuring but riding a
lot piggy-back on Plain TeX for low level details.

> 
> Also, what level of font support is available in KerTeX and Plan 9
> troff? I'm assuming that neither offers the level of "plug and play"
> support for modern Opentype fonts that can be found in XeTeX and
> Heirloom troff, but how are they otherwise?

There are different things.

First, if one has T1 fonts, everything is here in kerTeX to be able to
use these fonts with TeX---as an example, the post-install script uses
the core PostScript fonts.

The main problem today---and you cite XeTeX not LaTeX: this means that
"traditionnal" TeX packages are not better---is that TeX uses CID in a
8bit range, and not utf-8. This is the main problem, more than writing a
program à la afm2tfm(1) generating metrics information for TeX to be
able to use the fonts. TeX already uses alien fonts; but limited to an
8bit range---what are the T1 core PostScript fonts.

-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] troff book

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 01:42:11PM +0100, John Stalker wrote:
>
> For drawing, nothing beats rolling your own PostScript.  Which leads
> me to a complaint about both TeX and troff.  Both will happily typeset
> whole PostScript documents, but extreme trickery is needed to get them
> to produce fragments which can be inserted into hand rolled diagrams.

MetaPost allows you precisely to draw things (generating PostScript)
using TeX for the formatting of TeX---it can also use troff for the
formatting.

And it is in kerTeX.

MetaPost is really great!
--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] troff book

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 06:48:52PM +0100, tlaronde wrote:
>
> using TeX for the formatting of TeX---it can also use troff for the
> formatting.

"using TeX for the formatting of text" of course.

--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Bakul Shah]

For drawings I just use a graphical editor that can output TeX or EPS (or roll my own - but haven't needed that in many years). For text TeXworks with its side by side display of raw text and formatted output provides quick feedback to get some formatting details right. Switching to XeTeX also means I can use Unicode and not some ugly transliteration. With this setup I can focus on content for the most part.

On Dec 12, 2011, at 4:42 AM, John Stalker <stalker@maths.tcd.ie> wrote:

>> come to think of it, contemporary layout restrictions did rob us of
>> Fermat's own proof of his theorem.
>> more seriously, yes, of course you're going to have to select a formatting
>> system that can
>> cope with what you need to express. equations are one thing. the things
>> that never, ever work well
>> for me in computer-assisted typesetting are drawing, unless they are very
>> simple or i am very lucky.
> 
> For drawing, nothing beats rolling your own PostScript.  Which leads
> me to a complaint about both TeX and troff.  Both will happily typeset
> whole PostScript documents, but extreme trickery is needed to get them
> to produce fragments which can be inserted into hand rolled diagrams.
> 
> -- 
> John Stalker
> School of Mathematics
> Trinity College Dublin
> tel +353 1 896 1983
> fax +353 1 896 2282
> 

Re: [9fans] troff book

[Steve Simon]

I have used art(1) to generate pic(1) for some drawings.

several people have tried to port art(1) - which was in the 2nd edition
and released by the labs in extras. I collected their changes and
add a couple of small fixes of my own - in my contrib.

My biggest problem with art is its interface is... not what I am used to
from using windows apps. I am not saying its bad its just different and
needs a mental switch to use it.

It was Ok, but a little painful for the few drawings I needed, I'am sure
it would get easier if I used it more.

-Steve