Re: [Groff] Typesetting Software

[Dorai Sitaram]

> On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 08:55:23AM +0100, John¹ wrote:
> > Subject: [Groff] Typesetting Software
> > 
> > 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?


To speak a bit for the other side:

I find TeX document source to be generally more humanly readable (and editable)
than groff document source.  The latter always seems to require you to break 
lines at 
cognitively jarring locations, because a groff macro has to be called at the 
beginning
of a line, and can't function as a \switch in the middle.  Also, groff doesn't 
let you  
use arbitrary amounts of vertical space for visual relief.  TeX will collapse 
them into
a single parbreak in an intuitive manner.  (With the .blm macro, you can 
do some of this in groff too, but you have to fashion your .blm macro pretty 
carefully so
it works right in just the desired situations.)

groff does have escapes that be used in the middle of a (source) line, but they 
are
not user-definable.  In any case, {\it groff} is nicer to read and edit than 
\fIgroff\fP or 
\f[I]groff\f[P].  groff strings alleviate the problem of the 
macro-in-the-middle-of-a-line
somewhat, but they are not as versatile as groff macros by a long stretch.

I've also found simple and intermediate TeX macros to be easier to write and 
debug than
groff macros.  For the tougher macros, both systems get hairy.    But for 
moderately
complex things like writing a somewhat-verbatim display that might span pages, 
TeX
generally works right, whereas groff will produce interferences with header and 
footer.
I'm sure it can be done right, but the point is it requires considerably more 
macro-writing
expertise.   (That said, the macro languages of both systems seem hopelessly 
hobbled.)

LaTeX is indeed verbose and "canned", but plain TeX is pretty terse and affords 
programmability on par with (no better, no worse than) groff.

TeX loses to groff in not having -Tascii (or -Tutf8), but having a single-file 
text
output is not as urgent given that the TeX source is relatively more readable 
as text
anyway.

groff is neater than TeX for most run-of-the-mill tables that you might want in 
your
text.

In my estimation, which is grossly subjective,  plain TeX is better than groff 
is better 
than LaTeX, purely from a user interaction experience.