Re: [Groff] Colours & smart quotes

[Stewart C. Russell]

Larry Kollar wrote:
> 
> But I know I'd like to see how you use groff at HarperCollins. :-)

Short answer: we don't, yet.

Long answer: In the last few years, we developed our own home-brew
system for typesetting dictionaries. It's a fairly elegant PostScript
macro processor (and before you ask, no, you can't have it). It has some
known limitations, but it does an adequate job within its design limits.

Traditionally, we sent out our large dictionaries to be typeset at a
specialist markup house. While they do a very good job, there are often
problems in communication between us, and there's far more toing and
froing than we'd like. One of our typesetters uses troff, but a heavily
customised version.

There are a couple of commercial packages that look capable of large
dictionary typesetting; FrameMaker, which has many powerful features
hidden away and a fairly stiff (appx GBP 1800 for a single Solaris
licence) price tag. Another option is 3B2, which is very expensive (GBP
7500 per user), insanely complex, and has poor technical support -- so
much so that 3B2 users have banded together to form a user-led support
consortium. [Rumour has it that the engine behind 3B2 is -- or was --
TeX; it's certainly possible to edit raw markup files, as another
dictionary company uses it that way to avoid the high cost of the UI.]

We looked at TeX too, but it's just too huge and difficult to customise.
Font installation under TeX is demented, even with all the things that
are supposed to make it easy.

So there's groff, with its excellent text control (.tkf and .char are
lifesavers for dictionaries), active support community, and cost per
desk that looks good on any balance sheet (but is very bad for the GDP).
Of course, it has its limitations -- it doesn't do vertical
justification or column balancing out the box, widow and orphan control
can only be crudely fudged with .ne, and it doesn't have a point 'n
drool interface to keep the users happy. Complex typesetting is complex,
and you can't smooth out a learning curve with a mouse, so whatever we
choose, the difficult stuff will always fall to us hairy-handed markup
mavens. Unfortunately, we don't control the purse strings.

Of course, the biggest problem with groff is best explained with this:

echo 'Ab Qbpf' |\
 tr '[A-M][N-Z][a-m][n-z]' '[N-Z][A-M][n-z][a-m]' |\
 pbmtext | pnmcrop | pnmnoraw | tail -9 | tr '01' ' #'

(don't worry, it won't do anything bad, and on many systems it won't do
anything at all)

But we can work on that ;-)

And as regards Joe Mc Cool's comment about a bus trip with tea and
scones afterwards, you're welcome -- if you can get through the
snowdrifts, and please disinfect your footwear, as we're in the country
here... ;-)

-- 
Stewart C. Russell              Senior Analyst, Dictionary Division
address@hidden  HarperCollins Publishers
use Disclaimer; my $opinion;    Glasgow, Scotland