"Michael Kerpan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > ...that groff/troff seems to be written off by so many as "obsolete" > and "only useful for man pages", despite the fact that it can do > everything that TeX/LaTeX (seemingly the favored non-WYSIWYG document > processor) can do
First, it cannot. TeX provides much more sophisticated algorithms at its core. Thus, it can do many formatting tasks automatically which require manual interaction with troff. Even though the results are often far away from perfection, one can rely that they are good enough. Then, one must not forget that despite its comparatively many users in certain academic professions, TeX is a niche software itself. It is, effectively, only used to typeset equation-related material by people who have no real clue about typography but do care about certain aspects of the result. In this area, it is very efficient, and it is not surprising that there is no place left for troff there. The strength of troff, in comparison, is that it is much more comfortable to customize the layout. But those who actually care about doing that typically do not even know what a programming language is. > but while taking up 3 megabytes (as opposed to the > 300 or so used by the average TeX install) Who cares? Or do you intend to typeset books on embedded devices? > *roff plus -me, -mm or -ms is no harder to use than LaTeX or HTML. > It can't be availability as the *roff family is basically a required > component of any Unix-like system. It can't even be font support, > given that it's MUCH easier to install and use random PostScript fonts > in groff than in TeX... Who cares? Most people are completely satisified with Computer Modern despite the fact that every publication on font design will teach you to spot it as the hobbyist work which it is. You mention PostScript fonts: PostScript fonts have actually been obsoleted, and it is unlikely that they will be sold at all in a few years from now. For the OpenType successor technology, there is no support in groff, although considerable effort is under way to fully support them in TeX land, and I support at least some of the basic features in Heirloom troff. But for anybody in the Western hemisphere except professional typographers, fonts are not much more than toys, so the more recent developments will not make much of a difference here. > how can we fix it? Who, do you think, is the target group? Gunnar