Re: [Groff] groff | ConTeXt

[Gour]

Werner LEMBERG (address@hidden) wrote:

> Sorry for answering late.

Better late than never :-)

Thank you.

> 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.  

Thank you for that. My inquiry was primarily regarding the quality for
paper 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.

That's pretty clear that it is not a job for TeX.

> > 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.

That is good to know.

> 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.

Well, I'm thinking about writing in utf-8 (my locale also uses this encoding).

> 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.

That will be a great achievement.

> > f) is groff actively developed or is it more in a maintenance
> > status?
> 
> Something in the middle.

:-)

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

If I'm going to use groff, I'm sure I won't make index by hand :-)

> > 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.

And what about in comparison with LaTeX (ConTeXt is, as someone said, something
that LaTeX 3 is supposed to become), ie. is it possible to obtain the same
quality of output without too much tweaking - using e.g. mom package?

Sincerely,
Gour

-- 
Gour
address@hidden
Registered Linux User #278493