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Re: [Groff] Groff and computer education
From: |
Anton Shepelev |
Subject: |
Re: [Groff] Groff and computer education |
Date: |
Sun, 13 May 2012 23:56:42 +0400 |
Steve Izma
> James Lowden sent me, off list, this link to an
> article he wrote about the relevance of groff to
> fundamental concepts of programming and computer
> use. I assume he's too modest to broadcast it,
> but I think it's excellent:
> [...]
My thanks to James and to you, Steve.
Back in the University, everybody I knew used exclu-
sively MS Word, and doing a couple of term papers in
it got me tired and annoyed to a headache, although
I think I used its basic functionality like styles
appropriately. So when the time for the diploma
came, I said to myself I would do it LaTeX, which at
that time I didn't know at all.
I encountered the same problems as James's daughter,
because the default LaTeX output was very far from
the handicapped version of the Russian standard we
had to adhere to, so I registered with FIDO7 (the
Russian FIDO branch) and subscribed to a Tex-related
group, whose members helped me customize LaTeX as
was required. It was very difficult for a beginner,
but I didn't give up. Next was the problem of text
exchange, but that only enhanced my discipline.
In the end, it all payed off. While others had to
painfully go through the whole document to fix it
after incorporating even small changes, in LaTeX it
was easy. The bigger the document, the more evident
was its superiority over Word.
Anton