Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[DJ Chase]

On Sat Aug 13, 2022 at 4:25 PM EDT, James K. Lowden wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Aug 2022 12:31:51 +1000 (AEST)
> Damian McGuckin  wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Aug 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > I emailed ra...@inputplus.co.uk who owns troff.org to see if he
> > > wanted to host papers.  troff.org looks pretty dead so we shall
> > > see.  If he is still there, that would be a great place to host
> > > example papers.
>
> Grist for the mill, the Association of Computing Machinery recently
> opened its archive of papers, 1950-2000.  Many of them were doubtless
> written in troff.  
>
> https://www.acm.org/media-center/2022/april/50-years-backfile

Of particular interest:

•  “Typsetting APL Using TROFF And A Laser Printer”
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/28315.28379

•  “GRAP — A Language For Typesetting Graphs”
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/6424.6429

•  “Computer Typesetting Of Technical Journals On UNIX”
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1499402.1499562

•  “DITROFF/FFORTID, An Adaptation Of The UNIX™ DITROFF For
Formatting Bidirectional Text”
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/4656.4658

•  “A Graphics Typesetting Language”
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800209.806460

Cheers,
-- 
DJ Chase
They, Them, Theirs

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[James K. Lowden]

On Thu, 11 Aug 2022 12:31:51 +1000 (AEST)
Damian McGuckin  wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Aug 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> > I emailed ra...@inputplus.co.uk who owns troff.org to see if he
> > wanted to host papers.  troff.org looks pretty dead so we shall
> > see.  If he is still there, that would be a great place to host
> > example papers.
> 
> One issue is that most of my papers are either confidential or
> copyright to somebody so will limit what I can post.  I am sure that
> others might be in the same boat. 

Grist for the mill, the Association of Computing Machinery recently
opened its archive of papers, 1950-2000.  Many of them were doubtless
written in troff.  

https://www.acm.org/media-center/2022/april/50-years-backfile

--jkl

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Thomas Dupond]

Robert Marks  wrote:

> Dear All,
> 
> I have added two files (a source file sourcepr, and its processed PDF file
> sourcepr-3.pdf)
> in the directory https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm/groff/
> 
> This is a slideshow for a presentation; it uses eqn, grap, and tbl, with
> some unusual fonts for display.

Thank you Robert for all this.  I added the two documents you shared in
the groff examples repository at:

https://www.froude.eu/groff/documents/moyal-dirac.html
https://www.froude.eu/groff/documents/decision-making.html

I try to write a short description for each document I add to the
repository.  However if you wish to add or modify some things, I'm all
ears :D

--
Regards,
Thomas

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Robert Marks]

Dear All,

I have added two files (a source file sourcepr, and its processed PDF file
sourcepr-3.pdf)
in the directory https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm/groff/

This is a slideshow for a presentation; it uses eqn, grap, and tbl, with
some unusual fonts for display.

Enjoy,

Robert Marks

-- 
https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm 
0407665644

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Thomas Dupond]

Larry McVoy  wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 09:29:29PM -0500, Dave Kemper wrote:
> > On 8/10/22, Damian McGuckin  wrote:
> > > Do we just send them as attachments and let some poor bunny collate them?
> > > I do not want to overburden somebody limke Branden. How do we make them
> > > available?
> > 
> > The groff examples repository (http://www.froude.eu/groff/) so far has
> > only snippets showing how to do specific things, but I've cc:ed its
> > webmaster to get his thoughts on whether this site would also be an
> > appropriate venue for full articles.
> 
> Or even good pic/eqn/tbl/grap examples.  It's been established that I have
> a weird brain (I "see" the picture from the pic source, I talked with my
> wife who was a tech writer for a while, she said I was weird) and my weird
> brain learns a lot from examples.  I'm probably not the only one.

Sorry I'm in holidays so I missed this great paper by Robert Marks.

I would be happy to make a dedicated part of the groff examples
repository for full papers.  I already added last year a presentation by
Ingo Schwarze to EuroBSDCon 2018.

I have some spare time so if anyone wants to send me sources to their
own files either in full or in snippets I would be happy to incorporate
them.

If there are some copyright worries we can discuss on how to make the
code available to the public.

--
Regards,
Thomas

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[hbezemer--- via]

Damian McGuckin  wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Aug 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> > Well my papers are copyright sun, sgi, google, bitmover, and there has 
> > been enough time passed that nobody cares any more.
> 
> Journals have a long memory unfortunately. I think Elsevier are looking to 
> waive copyright on their 40 year old papers and prior so you can see their 
> thinking.  That almost predates PDF.
> 
> We take the attitude that customer related stuff is forever confidential.
To avoid confidentiality or copyright issues, would it be an idea to make a 
snippet
which only highlights the special features (when it is an extension of a common
macroset) filled with a few paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum dummy text, along with a
reference to the orginal book / article?
> 
> > I'm an MS.  Dabbled slightly in MM, didn't see the point given that I knew
> > MS, tried ME for a year and it was like the year I tried emacs, went back
> > to MS and vi.
> 
> Luckily, eqn is independent of macro package.
> 
> Stay safe - Damian
> 
> Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
> Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted here
> Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present employer

Regards,

Hans

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[hbezemer--- via]

Thank you Robert!

I've downloaded the documents and will look into them.

Hans

Robert Marks  wrote:

> Following suggestions from hbeze...@kliksafe.nl and Larry McVoy,
> I have put the source file (and the latest PDF output) in a directory, at
> https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm/groff/
> 
> There are some comments to myself, and some std output diagnostics, and I
> have not included the smart quotes macro or the drop cap macro, and I use
> Goudy and a Zapf Dingbats font character, but everything else should work.
> In particular, all the eqn expressions (in Times). The output is for a B5
> sized page.  I did not use refer, but did the references by hand.
> 
> Robert Marks
> 
> -- 
> https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm 
> 0407665644

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2022-08-11T12:31:51+1000, Damian McGuckin wrote:
> I use MM as a macro package. Is that still relevant to enough people?

I think so.  People pop up out of nowhere from time to time who use it,
and groff's implementation is not "deprecated" or anything like that.

In fact, recently, I've begun fixing up its man page.  As anyone who
follows my commit history knows, this is usually an early stage in my
learning a component well enough to address bug reports in it.

Already our documentation of which parts of groff mm are extensions is
improved, and several documented DWB mm features formerly undocumented
by us are now described.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/contrib/mm/groff_mm.7.man

> As young Doug reminded me a long time ago, if a macro package does the
> job for you once you learn it, you keep using what you first learnt
> if. He has been an MS person for slightly longer than I have been an
> MM person.
> 
> Most of my papers have equations, both simple and complex although I
> am still learning 'eqn' even though I have used it and troff/groff for
> many decades.

I feel better now about my early struggles with it.  I look forward to
building my skills when I need to use it in anger.  Ten years ago this
would have been "all the time".

Regards,
Branden


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Damian McGuckin]

On Wed, 10 Aug 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:

Well my papers are copyright sun, sgi, google, bitmover, and there has 
been enough time passed that nobody cares any more.


Journals have a long memory unfortunately. I think Elsevier are looking to 
waive copyright on their 40 year old papers and prior so you can see their 
thinking.  That almost predates PDF.


We take the attitude that customer related stuff is forever confidential.


I'm an MS.  Dabbled slightly in MM, didn't see the point given that I knew
MS, tried ME for a year and it was like the year I tried emacs, went back
to MS and vi.


Luckily, eqn is independent of macro package.

Stay safe - Damian

Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted here
Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present employer

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 12:31:51PM +1000, Damian McGuckin wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Aug 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> >I emailed ra...@inputplus.co.uk who owns troff.org to see if he wanted
> >to host papers.  troff.org looks pretty dead so we shall see.  If he is
> >still there, that would be a great place to host example papers.
> 
> One issue is that most of my papers are either confidential or copyright to
> somebody so will limit what I can post.  I am sure that others might be in
> the same boat. I think a thesis is (shared?) copyright between the author
> and the university. We might need some waffle in the directory to cover
> copyright issues. Most papers are not a single file.

Well my papers are copyright sun, sgi, google, bitmover, and there has been
enough time passed that nobody cares any more.  I won't tell other people
what to do, and I wouldn't publish a paper from an on-going company without
their permission, but so much stuff is in the "don't care" category, that
stuff should be published.  Or could be.

> I use MM as a macro package. Is that still relevant to enough people? As
> young Doug reminded me a long time ago, if a macro package does the job for
> you once you learn it, you keep using what you first learnt if. He has been
> an MS person for slightly longer than I have been an MM person.

I'm an MS.  Dabbled slightly in MM, didn't see the point given that I knew
MS, tried ME for a year and it was like the year I tried emacs, went back 
to MS and vi.

> Most of my papers have equations, both simple and complex although I am
> still learning 'eqn' even though I have used it and troff/groff for many
> decades.

My mathy son would like to see those.  

For a lot of people, not the troff nerds, but more casual users, a troff
paper is sort of like a device driver.  There is some Unix quote that
God wrote the first device driver and people have copied that and tweaked
it for their device ever since.  I think a lot of people would be happy
to look through some papers, find one that is close, copy it and change
it to be their paper.  All without having to learn the details (until
they need to).

--lm

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 09:29:29PM -0500, Dave Kemper wrote:
> On 8/10/22, Damian McGuckin  wrote:
> > Do we just send them as attachments and let some poor bunny collate them?
> > I do not want to overburden somebody limke Branden. How do we make them
> > available?
> 
> The groff examples repository (http://www.froude.eu/groff/) so far has
> only snippets showing how to do specific things, but I've cc:ed its
> webmaster to get his thoughts on whether this site would also be an
> appropriate venue for full articles.

Or even good pic/eqn/tbl/grap examples.  It's been established that I have
a weird brain (I "see" the picture from the pic source, I talked with my
wife who was a tech writer for a while, she said I was weird) and my weird
brain learns a lot from examples.  I'm probably not the only one.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy   Retired to fishing  http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Damian McGuckin]

On Wed, 10 Aug 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:


I emailed ra...@inputplus.co.uk who owns troff.org to see if he wanted
to host papers.  troff.org looks pretty dead so we shall see.  If he is
still there, that would be a great place to host example papers.


One issue is that most of my papers are either confidential or copyright 
to somebody so will limit what I can post.  I am sure that others might be 
in the same boat. I think a thesis is (shared?) copyright between the 
author and the university. We might need some waffle in the directory to 
cover copyright issues. Most papers are not a single file.


I use MM as a macro package. Is that still relevant to enough people? As 
young Doug reminded me a long time ago, if a macro package does the job 
for you once you learn it, you keep using what you first learnt if. He has 
been an MS person for slightly longer than I have been an MM person.


Most of my papers have equations, both simple and complex although I am 
still learning 'eqn' even though I have used it and troff/groff for many 
decades.


Stay safe - Damian

Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted here
Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present employer

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Dave Kemper]

On 8/10/22, Damian McGuckin  wrote:
> Do we just send them as attachments and let some poor bunny collate them?
> I do not want to overburden somebody limke Branden. How do we make them
> available?

The groff examples repository (http://www.froude.eu/groff/) so far has
only snippets showing how to do specific things, but I've cc:ed its
webmaster to get his thoughts on whether this site would also be an
appropriate venue for full articles.

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Larry McVoy]

I emailed ra...@inputplus.co.uk who owns troff.org to see if he wanted
to host papers.  troff.org looks pretty dead so we shall see.  If he is
still there, that would be a great place to host example papers.

On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 11:32:24AM +1000, Damian McGuckin wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Aug 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> >I'm a big fan of sharing sources to papers done in troff.  I've learned
> >a lot from reading those.
> 
> Do we just send them as attachments and let some poor bunny collate them? I
> do not want to overburden somebody limke Branden. How do we make them
> available? I have some stuff but it is a bit boring to read.
> 
> Stay safe - Damian
> 
> Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
> Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted here
> Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present employer

-- 
---
Larry McVoy   Retired to fishing  http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Damian McGuckin]

On Wed, 10 Aug 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:


I'm a big fan of sharing sources to papers done in troff.  I've learned
a lot from reading those.


Do we just send them as attachments and let some poor bunny collate them? 
I do not want to overburden somebody limke Branden. How do we make them 
available? I have some stuff but it is a bit boring to read.


Stay safe - Damian

Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted here
Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present employer

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Robert Marks]

Following suggestions from hbeze...@kliksafe.nl and Larry McVoy,
I have put the source file (and the latest PDF output) in a directory, at
https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm/groff/

There are some comments to myself, and some std output diagnostics, and I
have not included the smart quotes macro or the drop cap macro, and I use
Goudy and a Zapf Dingbats font character, but everything else should work.
In particular, all the eqn expressions (in Times). The output is for a B5
sized page.  I did not use refer, but did the references by hand.

Robert Marks

-- 
https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm 
0407665644

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Larry McVoy]

I'm a big fan of sharing sources to papers done in troff.  I've learned
a lot from reading those.

On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 10:22:52AM +0200, hbezemer--- via wrote:
> Dear Robert,
> 
> Robert Marks  wrote:
> 
> > More recently ??? last year in fact ??? as the Editor I used troff to set 
> > the
> > text for an especially mathematical paper in the Journal and Proceedings of
> > the Royal Society of New South Wales (Sydney).  See the paper,
> > Basil Hiley.
> > The Moyal-Dirac controversy revisited.
> > 
> > Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales *154*:
> > 139-160, 2021
> > at
> > https://royalsoc.org.au/images/pdf/journal/154-2-Hiley.pdf
> What a great example of what (g)roff, eqn (and refer?) can do.
> Would you like to elaborate on what macrosets you used?
> Would it be a nice idea to make a dummy article with some equations and 
> reference
> so others can use that as a template?
> > 
> > Robert Marks
> > -- 
> > https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm 
> > 0407665644
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Hans

-- 
---
Larry McVoy   Retired to fishing  http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[hbezemer--- via]

Dear Robert,

Robert Marks  wrote:

> More recently ??? last year in fact ??? as the Editor I used troff to set the
> text for an especially mathematical paper in the Journal and Proceedings of
> the Royal Society of New South Wales (Sydney).  See the paper,
> Basil Hiley.
> The Moyal-Dirac controversy revisited.
> 
> Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales *154*:
> 139-160, 2021
> at
> https://royalsoc.org.au/images/pdf/journal/154-2-Hiley.pdf
What a great example of what (g)roff, eqn (and refer?) can do.
Would you like to elaborate on what macrosets you used?
Would it be a nice idea to make a dummy article with some equations and 
reference
so others can use that as a template?
> 
> Robert Marks
> -- 
> https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm 
> 0407665644

Kind regards,

Hans

Re: using groff/troff in producing academic journals

[Robert Marks]

As I said earlier, we used nroff/troff to produce the Australian Journal of
Management in the 1980s.

More recently — last year in fact — as the Editor I used troff to set the
text for an especially mathematical paper in the Journal and Proceedings of
the Royal Society of New South Wales (Sydney).  See the paper,
Basil Hiley.
The Moyal-Dirac controversy revisited.

Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales *154*:
139-160, 2021
at
https://royalsoc.org.au/images/pdf/journal/154-2-Hiley.pdf

Robert Marks
-- 
https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm 
0407665644