From: U'll Be King of the Stars <ullbeking@andrewnesbit.org>
To: arnold@skeeve.com, Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org>,
The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>,
Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] earliest Unix roff
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2019 08:32:25 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <27f52737-3e3b-1198-7ed4-6b97a5f19938@andrewnesbit.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201909150654.x8F6sChG021185@freefriends.org>
On 15/09/2019 07:54, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> "U'll Be King of the Stars" <ullbeking@andrewnesbit.org> wrote:
>> I've been wondering whether it is possible and worthwhile to use *roff
>> for complex technical documentation. I've always loved the aesthetic
>> that books produced using *roff have but there are other reasons too.
>>
>> As far as _markup_ is concerned we have DocBook for example. I am also
>> looking into this. (Also, I understand it's not a typesetting system.)
>
> Unless you use a WYSIWYG tool that generates DocBook, you should avoid it.
> Your fingers will kill you.
Oh, I'm not looking for WYSIWIG or even really WYSIMIM. I'm well used
to writing in structural markup and presentation markup languages, e.g.,
LaTeX (which I think is extremely complicated, and since I left the
university environment I do not miss it).
AS for authoring DocBook I was depending on GNU Emacs to do a lot of the
heavy XML stuff for me. Wishful thinking perhaps.
> I have written books in troff, DocBook
> and Texinfo. Texinfo is *by far* the superior markup language.
I've had a feeling that Texinfo has been getting brushed to the side.
Are you suggesting that Info is a good as a rendered documentation
format? Or just that Texinfo is good for proto-documents that are to be
authored in a parseable and meaningful format?
I've been a long-time GNU Emacs user so reading Info files is OK for me.
But we've never had a _nice_ Info reader, which is why it didn't take
off I think. A lot of people REALLY hate the Info UI.
Moreover it was (is?) very difficult to generate good contents and index
pages with the official tools that I used at the time. I started
working on improving this about 20 years ago but back then it felt as
though the GNU Info and GNU Emacs projects had other things on their minds.
> Using Texinfo can generate DocBook which your publisher can turn into PDF.
> (I have done this, three times at least.) But working directly in
> DocBook just plain hurts.
OK, so you are suggesting Texinfo as a prototypical markup language, not
necessarily something that will end up as Info files?
I have read the Texinfo documentation and I agree that it seemed like a
rich markup language.
>> Getting back to *roff, does anybody know if there is a (hopefully rich)
>> repository of macros, or any other resources, for my use case? (La)TeX
>> has this but I'd like to try something else. What do people think?
>
> The MM macros are the most capable of the standard sets that are
> out there, although possibly the MOM macros distributed with groff
> are even more so; I have not investigated fully.
Thank you for the heads up. I never heard of MOM but MM is more familiar.
*I haven't really looked at eqn beyond browsing docs and I'm not sure
how much I should expect from it.*
TeX is (still?) the king of mathematical expression typesetting.
> My own wish for the next genie in a lamp that I come across would be
> for a texinfo --> troff translator.
Have you looked at Pandoc? I don't know if it will do this but it's
worth checking out.
Andrew
--
OpenPGP key: EB28 0338 28B7 19DA DAB0 B193 D21D 996E 883B E5B9
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-09-15 7:32 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 148+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-09-13 3:20 [TUHS] My EuroBSDcon talk (preview for commentary) Warner Losh
2019-09-13 9:03 ` Branden Robinson
2019-09-13 19:47 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-13 20:02 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-13 20:06 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-13 20:24 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-13 20:43 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-13 20:53 ` Diomidis Spinellis
2019-09-13 21:45 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-13 22:13 ` [TUHS] earliest Unix roff Warren Toomey
2019-09-13 22:55 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-14 2:02 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-14 2:44 ` Warren Toomey
2019-09-15 2:56 ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2019-09-15 6:54 ` arnold
2019-09-15 7:01 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-15 16:17 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-15 17:23 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-09-15 19:48 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-15 21:16 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-15 7:32 ` U'll Be King of the Stars [this message]
2019-09-15 7:46 ` arnold
2019-09-15 19:37 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 5:52 ` arnold
2019-09-16 12:10 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 12:26 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2019-09-16 13:42 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 14:54 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 16:09 ` Paul Winalski
2019-09-16 22:05 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-16 22:33 ` reed
2019-09-17 0:11 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-17 0:02 ` Nemo Nusquam
2019-09-17 0:21 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-09-17 11:12 ` Thomas Paulsen
2019-09-17 0:46 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 13:13 ` Chet Ramey
2019-09-16 14:51 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 14:57 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 15:14 ` Richard Salz
2019-09-16 15:48 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-09-16 16:10 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 16:16 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-16 16:26 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 16:31 ` Richard Salz
2019-09-16 16:45 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 17:19 ` KatolaZ
2019-09-16 17:24 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 17:32 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-16 17:35 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 17:37 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-16 18:09 ` [TUHS] [OT] " KatolaZ
2019-09-16 18:19 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-16 18:04 ` [TUHS] " Chet Ramey
2019-09-16 18:19 ` KatolaZ
2019-09-16 23:24 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-16 17:24 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 17:00 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-17 11:20 ` Thomas Paulsen
2019-09-16 19:13 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-16 19:31 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-16 22:35 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-17 7:53 ` arnold
2019-09-17 14:21 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-17 15:03 ` arnold
2019-09-17 15:58 ` Christopher Browne
2019-09-17 18:15 ` arnold
2019-09-17 18:32 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-18 0:42 ` Adam Thornton
2019-09-16 21:42 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-16 21:48 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 21:54 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-16 21:59 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-17 5:07 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2019-09-16 22:10 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-17 0:16 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-09-17 0:31 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-17 12:20 ` David
2019-10-05 19:44 ` Michael Parson
2019-09-15 19:35 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-15 20:49 ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2019-09-16 6:20 ` arnold
2019-09-16 12:13 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 12:34 ` arnold
2019-09-16 14:52 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-17 0:10 ` [TUHS] O'Reilly groff macros (was: earliest Unix roff) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-09-17 0:51 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-17 0:54 ` [TUHS] O'Reilly groff macros U'll Be King of the Stars
2019-09-17 1:03 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-17 1:41 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-09-17 1:58 ` Clem cole
2019-09-15 19:27 ` [TUHS] earliest Unix roff Clem Cole
2019-09-15 19:31 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-14 7:35 ` [TUHS] My EuroBSDcon talk (preview for commentary) Diomidis Spinellis
2019-09-13 21:31 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-17 19:29 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-17 20:17 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-17 19:18 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-17 20:13 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-13 20:06 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-14 6:13 ` Wesley Parish
2019-09-15 21:46 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-15 23:25 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-15 23:35 ` Clem cole
2019-09-16 1:42 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-16 1:52 ` Clem cole
2019-09-16 2:05 ` George Michaelson
2019-09-16 2:37 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-16 3:29 ` [TUHS] INed/Rand Editor/Ned [was " Charles H. Sauer
2019-09-16 14:53 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 16:16 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-16 20:21 ` G. Branden Robinson
2019-09-16 20:47 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-16 22:33 ` George Michaelson
2019-09-16 23:14 ` G. Branden Robinson
2019-10-09 1:10 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2019-09-16 22:48 ` [TUHS] better ways and termcap vs. terminfo " G. Branden Robinson
2019-09-17 11:46 ` [TUHS] INed/Rand Editor/Ned [was Re: My EuroBSDcon talk (preview " Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-09-17 12:52 ` G. Branden Robinson
2019-10-09 0:38 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2019-09-16 1:31 ` [TUHS] " William Pechter
2019-09-16 1:48 ` Clem cole
2019-09-16 2:24 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-16 2:31 ` Toby Thain
2019-09-16 3:36 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-09-15 2:45 [TUHS] earliest Unix roff Doug McIlroy
2019-09-15 22:07 Doug McIlroy
2019-09-17 0:20 ` Steve Johnson
2019-09-17 1:11 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-09-17 1:17 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-17 1:26 ` Clem cole
2019-09-17 1:33 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-17 22:39 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-17 1:36 ` Richard Salz
2019-09-17 1:57 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-17 1:19 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-19 18:10 Norman Wilson
2019-09-19 18:37 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-19 18:44 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-19 19:44 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-19 20:38 ` John P. Linderman
2019-09-20 13:41 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-20 15:03 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-19 20:53 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-19 18:42 Norman Wilson
2019-09-19 22:42 ` Rob Pike
2019-09-19 22:55 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-19 18:50 [TUHS] [OT] " Norman Wilson
2019-09-19 19:00 ` Nemo Nusquam
2019-09-19 20:18 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-19 20:42 ` [TUHS] " Andy Kosela
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