Re: [Groff] Macro packages

[Pierre-Jean]

Hello,

trebol <address@hidden> wrote:

> So maybe I’ll try ms,  I
> find it more simple (the groff_ms man page show me in a cou‐
> ple of lines all the basic things I want to do in  a  simple
> way),  and like Ralph suggests, extend it with my own macros
> to fill my needs.

That's the step I followed four years ago, and it seems to
me it was a good choice.

> I find groff awesome and I can’t  believe
> it  fits in 10M. I feel all the system’s potential, so while
> I’m learning I would like to know the experiences  of  users
> writing   science   texts,   novels,  poetry and other works
> using this packages, and the  main  problems  they   encoun‐
> tered.

I'm actually writing my philosophy thesis with troff
(heirloom troff), and before that, I've writen my master
memory, the lessons I teach, and some articles with it.

The onliest problem I encoutered was concerning the
bibliography: I have to follow the ISO-690 standart, and the
french typography. So, I've first written a macro to handle
that whith ms.

It was a nice way to learn both refer and troff internals.
After that, I've decided to create my own macro set, whith the
layout I wanted (marginals notes instead of footnotes).

> This  could help me to resolve my personal "TeX vs
> Groff" advantages and disadvantages dilemma (And other  peo‐
> ple reading the  mailing list too).

This has been discussed a lot here. It also have been
discussed on plan9 mailing list. You could have a look at
these discussion if you still need to be convinced. Know
that there are at least four things to compare: Kertex (a
Tex distribution that only contain Plain Tex), Latex, Groff
and Heirloom Troff. Each one has advantages.

In my opinion, the advantage of troff (and groff) is that
it's easy to create and hack macro. The disadvantage is that
the macro you need probably doesn't exist yet. Less is more...


> Sorry for my English, and thanks to all.

Sorry for mine !

Cheers,

Pierre-Jean.