[TUHS] TeX and groff (was: roff(7))

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com>]

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On Friday, 31 December 2021 at 15:40:39 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 01, 2022 at 09:07:49AM +1000, George Michaelson wrote:
>> But macros aside, anyone who had used runoff had a
>> massively simpler path into roff than TeX. My future was set. The phd
>> students at Leeds looked down their noses at me for using cryptic .2 letter
>> inline magic. They were the high priests of things, I was just a computer
>> operator.  Watching them spend weeks and weeks wrangling a one em offset
>> problem stopping perfection in print was.. entertaining.
>
> I was program committee chair for Linux Expo in 1999 (all that means is
> I formatted the proceedings into a book).  I let people use LaTex but
> encouraged troff.  A few people tried out troff and their reaction was
> "Wow, that was so easy and groff is really fast!"

Heh.  I had a similar experience when writing "Porting Unix Software"
(1995).  O'Reilly insisted on using groff with their macro set, and I
had only had experience with (La)TeX.  I fought for quite some time,
but ultimately gave in.  Despite Baby Duck Syndrome, I discovered that
I far preferred groff to TeX, and I've been using it ever since.

From PUS:

   .Pe
   More than anywhere else in porting, it is good for your state of mind to steer
   clear of
   .TXI \&
   internals.  The assumptions on which the syntax is based differ markedly from
   those of other programming languages.  For example, identifiers may not contain
   digits, and spaces are required only when the meaning would otherwise be
   ambiguous (to
   .TXI ,
   not to you), so the sequence \s10\f(CWfontsize300\fR\s0 is in fact the
   identifier \s10\f(CWfontsize\fR\s0 followed by the number \s10\f(CW300\fR\s0.
   On the other hand, it is almost impossible to find any good solid information in
   the documentation, so you could spend hours trying to solve a minor problem.  I
   have been using
   .TXI \&
   frequently for years, and I still find it the most frustrating program I have
   ever seen.\**
   .FS
   When I wrote this sentence, I wondered if I wasn't overstating the case.  Mike
   Loukides, the author of \fIProgramming with GNU Software\fR, reviewed the final
   draft and added a single word: \fIAmen\fR.
   .FE

> The only negative reaction was table of contents complaints, LaTex is
> 2 pass so it can do them, roff is one pass so you have to fiddle with
> things.  A lot.

I solved that issue in later documents with two passes in the Makefile
targets, frobbing things like references and contents in between.

Greg
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