Re: [Groff] Typesetting Software

[Joerg van den Hoff]

On Jun 03 2009 (Wed,  8:55), John¹ wrote:
> Many years ago, when type used to be set by hand, I was one of those who 
> did the typesetting. I am now looking at the methodology of using either 
> Groff or LaTex to produce print ready text. Can anyone briefly tell me if 
> Groff does the same job as LaTex? 
> 
> Obviously there will be a bias in asking this group but does one have an 
> advantage over the other?
> -- 
> John Seago
> GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/
> ()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail
> /\                        - against microsoft attachments
> 
> 

a few additional random remarks:

I'm,  too, mostly using 'groff' but LaTeX is more digestable
for publishers when  submitting  manuscripts  so  I'm  in  a
transition to LaTeX for this kind of job.

overall I think I like groff better.

LaTeX is more high level than groff. It essentially isolates
you completely from the formatting level. very difficult  to
intervene if you don't like it, I believe.

groff  is  "already  there"   on each Linux/Unix type system
(even in  Apple's  MacOS)  since  it's  needed  for  manpage
formatting. 

groff  is  a  single pass formatter, LaTeX is multi-pass. so
things like forward page references ("cf.  section  5,  page
10")  are  easy  in  LaTeX  whereas  in  groff  you  have to
intervene (forcing multiple passes and using some tricks)

Formatting  directives  in  LaTeX are much more verbose.  If
you really have to type all that  stuff  (instead  of  using
editor shortcuts or what else) it gets in the way a bit.

groff  does  good/excellent typesetting. LaTeX is supposedly
the 'gold standard' in  terms  of  achievable  quality.  but
whether  or  not,  e.g.  the  paragraph based hyphenation of
LaTeX is that relevant (compared to  groff's  line-based(?):
well I don't see much to complain about with groff.

(La)TeX  is  way more dogmatic how things "have" to look. so
it's more difficult to deviate from canonical behaviour,  at
least for me.

LaTeX  has  lots of packages/styles predefined which one can
use to format, e.g., whole books including running  headers,
cross  referencing,  bibliographies, index etc.  all this is
possible in 'groff', too, but much of  it  has  to  be  done
yourself or you have to ask on this list...

I  believe a standard LaTeX install amounts to a few hundred
MB, groff comes in at maybe 10-20 MB (?) or  something  like
that.

if  you  have  documents  with lots of graphics included the
only way in groff is to include  everything  as  postscript.
this    tends   to   inflate   document   (directory)   size
substantially. using 'pdflatex' on the other hand allows  to
keep everything as pdf. that's nicer.

I  would  recommend  to try out a few 'simple' documents and
format them both with LaTeX and a good groff  macro  package
(would  recommend  `ms') and see how you get along with both
systems. my own preference now is to use groff as my default
and switch to LaTeX for large things like book chapters, not
because it's not possible with groff but rather  because  in
LaTeX  sensible  style  definitions are easily available for
nearly every imaginable document. in groff  such  predefined
layouts are much more basic AFAIK.

there  is  a  third  candidate: 'lout' (there is a wikipedia
entry), which has quite some nice ideas,  but  it  seems  to
have   at   least   some   sub-optimal   settings  regarding
hyphenation thresholds which frequently  squeezes  too  much
text in a line according to my taste.

last  not  least: groff can produce reasonably formatting of
ASCII documents (like this mail, for instance).

joerg