Re: [Groff] groff | ConTeXt

[Werner LEMBERG]

Sorry for answering late.

> I went through groff manual & mom docs, but I still have some
> unresolved issues:
> 
> a) how does groff output in general compare with the Tex quality
> (page output, orphans, widows, paragraphs, lines, kerning ...)?

In general, TeX's output is better if you use it for non-TTY devices.
The reason is simple: groff typesets data line by line (there are
facilities, of course, to divert input for further manipulation),
while TeX handles data on the paragraph level.  You can't use TeX for
TTY output.  If you intend to provide your document similar to man
pages (this is, having decent TTY and paper output), groff is the tool
of choice IMHO.

> b) what about hyphenation rules for non-English texts? (besides
> English, I use Croatian as well as Sanskrit diacritics and the
> Croatian is very well hyphenated with the help of
> hrhyph.tex. Somewhere in groff's docs I've noted that groff uses
> some simpler rules.)

This is (almost) as sophisticated as TeX.  You can use hrhyph.tex
without any modification directly with (recent versions of) groff.

> c) in ConTeXt I can use TeX, type1 & ttf fonts, but Alejandro wrote
> me that in order to use ttf I need Type 42 PS wrapper. Is it good
> enough?

The PS frontend, grops, only supports Type 1 fonts in PFA format,
without the ability to subset fonts.  Since today most PS documents
are converted to PDF this limitation doesn't really matter -- in most
cases (this is, if you don't include PS files which can't be converted
to native PDF), you can do PS->PDF->PS to get smaller PS files.

> d) is there something like babel language package for groff, taking
> care for different languages, i.e. translating common strings
> (section, contents ..) as well as taking care of proper input/output
> encoding?  (both in LaTeX & ConTeXt I can enter Croatian chars
> directly from the keyboard).

No.  There isn't a standard macro package like LaTeX.  If you set your
keyboard encoding to a ISO-8859-X, groff happily accepts the input
also.

> e) since I have multi-language requirements, what is the present
> status of utf-8 support in groff, and what are the plans for the
> future?

On the output side, you can have text in UTF-8 (for TTY).  On the
input side you are restricted to ISO character sets (ASCII +
0xA1-0xFE).  Support for UTF-8 is on the TODO list.

> f) is groff actively developed or is it more in a maintenance
> status?

Something in the middle.

> g) what about the docs? (ConTeXt has several manuals, although I
> have to congratulate for groff-1.19.pdf - didn't find it at once
> since it is not included in my Gentoo docs)

GNU troff is completely documented (both as man pages and as a texinfo
document).  There are man pages for all other programs of the groff
package; most of them (but not all) are complete.

> h) when working with LaTeX I used xindy indexing package. It also
> works with ConTeXt and it can handle utf-8 (see
> http://tbookdtd.sourceforge.net/).  Does anyone uses xindy with
> groff (one just require to translate xindy's raw index file into
> groff's)

xindy should work with groff also, but AFAIK noone has yet taken the
time to adapt it properly.  You are invited to contribute support...

> i) I must confess that groff's macro language leaves better
> impression on my mind than TeX's (I never did any TeX programming
> and was just using available LaTex packages and ConTeXt features),
> and therefore I consider it could be that a task of writing TEI
> back-end for groff could be easier to accomplish than for ConTeXt,
> but I'm interested is there anybody interested for such a back-end
> and/or how is it easy to achieve the same ConTeXt functionality in
> groff in regards to features and quality of paper output?

While I'm an active LaTeX programmer (I've written, among others, the
CJK package for LaTeX), I've never used ConTeXt, so I can't comment.


    Werner