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

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

[Allan Heim]

troff got me my first job in the industry, working at SCO in the '80s 
as a typesetter. I swore by my copy of Word Processing on the UNIX
System by Morris Krieger, and I'm shocked to not see it listed at
http://www.troff.org/books.html but a Google search shows that used
copies are still available, and at reasonable prices.

If you want to go the plain TeX route, I _strongly_ recommend Arvin 
Borde's books, TeX By Example and Mathematical TeX By Example. The
books' conceit is to show typeset text on one page, and the source code 
used to generate that text on the facing page--such an obvious idea.
Those, plus The TeXbook, are sure to help someone become a solid wizard.





      

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

[hiro]

> i think everybody would appreciate one xor the other cleaned up,
de-pccified and added to the distribution.

I like this use of languages :)

The thread is getting big. Perhaps simply learning troff/tex is indeed easier.

But I really am no typesetter, just a simple computer user.
Tex is yet an other language, Latex too complicated, Microsoft Word
too ugly, Troff macros not in a good state...

What can I use?

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

[Gabriel Diaz]

hello

html?

For those who use math in their docs, this might be of interest:
http://www.mathjax.org,

gabi

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 2:16 PM, hiro <23hiro at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > i think everybody would appreciate one xor the other cleaned up,
> de-pccified and added to the distribution.
>
> I like this use of languages :)
>
> The thread is getting big. Perhaps simply learning troff/tex is indeed easier.
>
> But I really am no typesetter, just a simple computer user.
> Tex is yet an other language, Latex too complicated, Microsoft Word
> too ugly, Troff macros not in a good state...
>
> What can I use?
>

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

[Aharon Robbins]

I really like the GNU project's Texinfo markup language, which
sets on top of TeX, but you don't have to know TeX. (I've been using
Texinfo for > 20 years, but don't know any TeX.)

I've written books in troff, Docbook/XML, and Texinfo, and Texinfo is
by far the easiest.

HTH,

Arnold

In article <AANLkTinh0bTUvFZw-YqmVY-ZVaouUo-4gyOJ0KVOmqPR at mail.gmail.com> you write:
>hello
>
>html?
>
>For those who use math in their docs, this might be of interest:
>http://www.mathjax.org,
>
>gabi
>
>On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 2:16 PM, hiro <23hiro at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > i think everybody would appreciate one xor the other cleaned up,
>> de-pccified and added to the distribution.
>>
>> I like this use of languages :)
>>
>> The thread is getting big. Perhaps simply learning troff/tex is indeed easier.
>>
>> But I really am no typesetter, just a simple computer user.
>> Tex is yet an other language, Latex too complicated, Microsoft Word
>> too ugly, Troff macros not in a good state...
>>
>> What can I use?
>>
>


-- 
Aharon (Arnold) Robbins 			arnold AT skeeve DOT com
P.O. Box 354		Home Phone: +972  8 979-0381
Nof Ayalon		Cell Phone: +972 50  729-7545
D.N. Shimshon 99785	ISRAEL

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

[erik quanstrom]

On Fri Mar 25 07:52:10 EDT 2011, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> I really like the GNU project's Texinfo markup language, which
> sets on top of TeX, but you don't have to know TeX. (I've been using
> Texinfo for > 20 years, but don't know any TeX.)
> 
> I've written books in troff, Docbook/XML, and Texinfo, and Texinfo is
> by far the easiest.

i never could get past the fact that texbook reeks of hubris
and nih, nor forgive gnu for using info as an excuse for not
having man pages.  that, and the fact that it's at least 100x
slower than troff, and the reader requires cursor addressing.

- erik

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

[Lucio De Re]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 08:25:27AM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> 
> i never could get past the fact that texbook reeks of hubris
> and nih, nor forgive gnu for using info as an excuse for not
> having man pages.  that, and the fact that it's at least 100x
> slower than troff, and the reader requires cursor addressing.
> 
And info is in a league of counter-intuitiveness all of its own.

++L

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

[pmarin]

My theory is that GNU tools were so bloated by design that they
realized that they  couldn't write a decent man page for their tools
so they invented the  info pages and the --help flag.

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:25 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro at quanstro.net> wrote:
> On Fri Mar 25 07:52:10 EDT 2011, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
>> I really like the GNU project's Texinfo markup language, which
>> sets on top of TeX, but you don't have to know TeX. (I've been using
>> Texinfo for > 20 years, but don't know any TeX.)
>>
>> I've written books in troff, Docbook/XML, and Texinfo, and Texinfo is
>> by far the easiest.
>
> i never could get past the fact that texbook reeks of hubris
> and nih, nor forgive gnu for using info as an excuse for not
> having man pages. ?that, and the fact that it's at least 100x
> slower than troff, and the reader requires cursor addressing.
>
> - erik
>
>

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

[dexen deVries]

On Friday 25 of March 2011 16:10:28 pmarin wrote:
> My theory is that GNU tools were so bloated by design that they
> realized that they  couldn't write a decent man page for their tools
> so they invented the  info pages and the --help flag.

coil!dexen!~ $ 9 man rc | wc -l
496
coil!dexen!~ $ man bash | wc -l
5351
coil!dexen!~ $ zcat /usr/info/bash.info.gz  | wc -l
10348


coil!dexen!~ $ 9 man mk | wc -l
416
coil!dexen!~ $ zcat /usr/info/make.info* | wc -l
12306

-- 
dexen deVries

[[[?][?]]]

``In other news, STFU and hack.''
mahmud, in response to Erann Gat's ``How I lost my faith in Lisp''
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2308816

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

[John Floren]

Well, I think it's more that Richard Stallman was so ridiculously in
love with ITS's documentation system (which was pretty good for its
time, I admit) that he decided to clone it for Unix.

Could the bloat of GNU tools merely be a ploy by rms to force people
into using info? :)


John

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 8:10 AM, pmarin <pmarin.mail at gmail.com> wrote:
> My theory is that GNU tools were so bloated by design that they
> realized that they ?couldn't write a decent man page for their tools
> so they invented the ?info pages and the --help flag.
>
> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:25 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro at quanstro.net> wrote:
>> On Fri Mar 25 07:52:10 EDT 2011, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
>>> I really like the GNU project's Texinfo markup language, which
>>> sets on top of TeX, but you don't have to know TeX. (I've been using
>>> Texinfo for > 20 years, but don't know any TeX.)
>>>
>>> I've written books in troff, Docbook/XML, and Texinfo, and Texinfo is
>>> by far the easiest.
>>
>> i never could get past the fact that texbook reeks of hubris
>> and nih, nor forgive gnu for using info as an excuse for not
>> having man pages. ?that, and the fact that it's at least 100x
>> slower than troff, and the reader requires cursor addressing.
>>
>> - erik
>>
>>
>
>

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

[John Floren]

Evidence: http://jfloren.net/its-info.png

That's a screenshot of Info running on an ITS system :)


John

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 8:32 AM, John Floren <john at jfloren.net> wrote:
> Well, I think it's more that Richard Stallman was so ridiculously in
> love with ITS's documentation system (which was pretty good for its
> time, I admit) that he decided to clone it for Unix.
>
> Could the bloat of GNU tools merely be a ploy by rms to force people
> into using info? :)
>
>
> John
>
> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 8:10 AM, pmarin <pmarin.mail at gmail.com> wrote:
>> My theory is that GNU tools were so bloated by design that they
>> realized that they ?couldn't write a decent man page for their tools
>> so they invented the ?info pages and the --help flag.
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:25 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro at quanstro.net> wrote:
>>> On Fri Mar 25 07:52:10 EDT 2011, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
>>>> I really like the GNU project's Texinfo markup language, which
>>>> sets on top of TeX, but you don't have to know TeX. (I've been using
>>>> Texinfo for > 20 years, but don't know any TeX.)
>>>>
>>>> I've written books in troff, Docbook/XML, and Texinfo, and Texinfo is
>>>> by far the easiest.
>>>
>>> i never could get past the fact that texbook reeks of hubris
>>> and nih, nor forgive gnu for using info as an excuse for not
>>> having man pages. ?that, and the fact that it's at least 100x
>>> slower than troff, and the reader requires cursor addressing.
>>>
>>> - erik
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>

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

[Michael Kerpan]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 11:32 AM, John Floren <john at jfloren.net> wrote:
> Well, I think it's more that Richard Stallman was so ridiculously in
> love with ITS's documentation system (which was pretty good for its
> time, I admit) that he decided to clone it for Unix.
>
> Could the bloat of GNU tools merely be a ploy by rms to force people
> into using info? :)

To be fair, Unix tools were getting bloated even without GNU (cat -v,
anyone?). GNU just introduced the
--verbose-lispmachine-style-option-syntax to the mess. Frankly, I
think that's the problem with a lot of GNU stuff: it was made by RMS
and other folks who mainly came out of the PDP-10 and LISP Machine
tradition which doesn't really mesh well with the Unix tradition.
Programs with lots of options were IMPORTANT when your shell
environment was really just a hacked up version of a debugger from the
mid-60s because you didn't have things like pipes to make programs
play nice together. On the other end, having a verbose syntax didn't
really matter when you were working with a smart LISP system or TWENEX
or some other system with really good completion support. Thus the
problems with GNU can be directly traced to the fact that it was
written by people with brains scrambled by DDT on the one hand and
spoiled by TWENEX and standalone LISP on the other.

Mike

[9fans] info bashing

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

> My theory is that GNU tools were so bloated by design that they
> realized that they  couldn't write a decent man page for their tools
> so they invented the  info pages and the --help flag.

In fairness to info, you have to consider its history.  The want was
to be able to present an online edition of some large documents (the
emacs documentation), with cross-references, search capabilities,
index lookups, etc.  This was long before the web was even a glimmer
in anyone's eye.  In that regard, it was a spectacular success.  Being
able to jump around a 400+page document in real time on a VT100
plugged into a Sun 3/50 workstation is a testament to that.

The standalone implementation suffers from being keystroke compatible
with the emacs lisp implementation.  Those of us who grep up on emacs
can find our way around.  For anyone else, I can't imagine how they 
manage to use it.

But as others have said, treating info as a replacement for man pages
is arrogance beyond any rational description.  Then again, the quality
of documentation for most GNU software matches that of the code.

--lyndon

[9fans] info bashing

[erik quanstrom]

> In fairness to info, you have to consider its history.  The want was
> to be able to present an online edition of some large documents (the
> emacs documentation), with cross-references, search capabilities,
> index lookups, etc.  This was long before the web was even a glimmer
> in anyone's eye.  In that regard, it was a spectacular success.  Being
> able to jump around a 400+page document in real time on a VT100
> plugged into a Sun 3/50 workstation is a testament to that.

i take this as another strike against info.  the fact that one
sees that the editor's docs are 400+ pages, and there's no easy
way to cut that down to a man page, and yet they proceeded to
build bloatware to accomidate bloatware.

it's like instead of taking a bath, you buy a monster air filter,
so no one will notice the stench.

- erik

[9fans] info bashing

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

> i take this as another strike against info.  the fact that one
> sees that the editor's docs are 400+ pages, and there's no easy
> way to cut that down to a man page, and yet they proceeded to
> build bloatware to accomidate bloatware.

That's like blaming Mozilla because you choose to read Sarah Palin's
missives with Firefox.

--lyndon

[9fans] info bashing

[erik quanstrom]

On Fri Mar 25 15:15:59 EDT 2011, lyndon at orthanc.ca wrote:
> > i take this as another strike against info.  the fact that one
> > sees that the editor's docs are 400+ pages, and there's no easy
> > way to cut that down to a man page, and yet they proceeded to
> > build bloatware to accomidate bloatware.
> 
> That's like blaming Mozilla because you choose to read Sarah Palin's
> missives with Firefox.

your defense of info was that it was built to be
read a 400+ page reference for emacs.  my claim is
that if you find a reasonable editor, you won't have
a need for info.

- erik

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

[Bakul Shah]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:25:27 EDT erik quanstrom <quanstro at quanstro.net>  wrote:
> On Fri Mar 25 07:52:10 EDT 2011, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> > I really like the GNU project's Texinfo markup language, which
> > sets on top of TeX, but you don't have to know TeX. (I've been using
> > Texinfo for > 20 years, but don't know any TeX.)
> > 
> > I've written books in troff, Docbook/XML, and Texinfo, and Texinfo is
> > by far the easiest.
> 
> i never could get past the fact that texbook reeks of hubris
> and nih, nor forgive gnu for using info as an excuse for not
> having man pages.  that, and the fact that it's at least 100x
> slower than troff, and the reader requires cursor addressing.

I am with you on Texinfo, and manpages are vastly preferable
over info files but TeX/latex can be used to produce some
beautiful text. See "The Beauty of Latex" page for some
examples:

  http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex

For a much larger example:

  http://www.duo.uio.no/publ/informatikk/2008/81971/uggedal.pdf