Re: [9fans] troff book

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

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
>