Re: [9fans] troff fonts with special characters

[Akshat <akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net>]

You are right in that Lout cannot handle non-ASCII input, which is
something that kept me from using it much, as well. However, the
overall approach to the syntax and what not is much nicer than TeX.
Also, I would argue that Lout has much nicer output than both, troff
and TeX.

On Sep 12, 2010, at 12:38, Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 12 September 2010 20:25, Akshat <akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net>
> wrote:
>> If you like the cleanliness and simplicity of troff files for writing
>> papers, and would like to avoid the hideousness of TeX, then you
>> might want
>> to try Lout. I ported it to Plan 9 earlier this year and just
>> copied it to
>> my contrib: contrib/akumar/lout.tgz
>>
>>
>> Best of luck,
>> ak
>
> Thanks for the idea.
> Actually I was considering this a while ago. I even printed out the
> manual.(I have lout in linux.)
> However, from what I read there I gained the feeling that
> -- it doesn't know utf (thus you can't really just write a single
> letter 'alpha' as you can in troff)
> -- it somehow seems to be an 'all together software' (as opposed to
> tbl/pic/eqn/...), which I don't like.
> -- the syntax for writing math is more complicated than in eqn. The
> syntax is rather closer to TeX, which I wanted to avoid, though the
> results, I feel, are no better than eqn's.
> True, I haven't actually tried the software much. May be that I am
> also wrong in some points.
>
> Well, don't take me wrong. I have not much against (plain)TeX. When I
> was about 15 and got a printed version of TeXBook, METAFONT, I was
> amazed. Its documentation can't be better (nothing to compare to
> anything). The algorithms are superior. It's not so big either
> (although today's distributions are horrible, >1GB [this I really
> hate]; but the core, as someone here is trying to put up, is fine; I
> mean KerTeX or what). It's only that troff is even much simpler and
> yet good enough. And also that the notation is much more human. Making
> a table with tbl or a simple graph with grap is a pleasure. Equations
> written for eqn can be read back from the source, without seeing
> millions of \\\\\\\.This is, I would say, what totally grabbed me. And
> the documentation as written by Kernighan is also awesome --- short,
> answers many potential questions right away, explains things clearly.
> This is why I also like plan 9, generally (though almost whatever I
> try doesn't work). TeX is very 'strict', precise; but you must have a
> good knowledge of it to talk it into something. Troff is more
> straightforward, simpler, and is more fun, some things are playful,
> e.g. traps.
>
> Thanks
> Ruda
>