Re: [Groff] Introduction to groff in french

[Peter Schaffter]

Salut, Gregoire !

On Tue, Oct 21, 2014, GregExp wrote:
> Hi groffies, 
> 
> I wrote a short introduction in french, hoping to allow people who are
> non-geeks to start using groff. 
> 
> https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/groff
> 
> I am thankful for any feedback.

Good work.  It's always a tough job summarizing groff.

Here are a couple of things I noticed:

Section 2, Installation :

  The last paragraph reads: "C'est en l'utilisant en ligne de
  commande avec ses options que vous pourrez vérifier que
  l'installation a eu lieu."

  This isn't the best way to verify package installation from the
  command line.  I recommend inserting a bit of code into your
  article for checking whether groff is installed:

    dpkg -l | sed -n '/groff[^-]/p'

Section 3, Groff pas à pas :

  The word "logiciel" at the end of the first paragraph has a
  superfluous hyphen.

Section 3.1, Le terminal :

  After the little poem entered using printf, you say: "Au lieu de
  .ps, vous pouvez demander un autre format.: .pdf, .html ou .dvi"
  This could be misleading.  Users might think all that's
  required for alternative formats is to save the file to a
  different extension.  You should probably mention the -T flag
  (-Tpdf, -Thtml, -Tdvi) in conjunction with saving to alternate
  formats.

Section 3.2, L'éditeur du texte :

  I wouldn't recommend users switch to a virtual console
  (Ctl-Alt-F1) for testing groff at the terminal.  Rather, just
  instruct them to fire up a terminal window.  This becomes
  important when later you say: "L'aperçu gxditview (par l'option
  -X) ne fonctionne évidemment pas en console. Le seul moyen de voir
  votre fichier de sortie est donc de l'imprimer."  While the
  statement is true, it's misleading; if the user is in a terminal
  window, s/he can perfectly well use gxditview.

Section 4, subsection Polices, sub-subsection Changer de familles
  de polices :

  "Pour retourner à la police par défaut entrez .ft p."  That should
  be ".ft P" (P majuscule).

  Also, I'd have been inclined to be a bit more precise in the
  section, introducing '.fam' as the way to change families, and
  '.ft' as the way to change fonts, adding that '.ft' can also be
  used to change *both*, e.g. '.ft HR'.

Section 5.4, -mom

  The French Linux Gazette translation (first "ici" link) contains
  a broken link to mom's old homepage.  Not much that can be done
  about that without contacting the page's author.

  The "ici" link in "Pour apprendre à travailler vraiment avec -mom"
  points to http://www.schaffter.ca/mom-03.html whereas mom-04.html
  makes more sense.

  Also, there's a good document on groff and -mom that's appropriate
  for your target audience at

    http://www.schaffter.ca/shared/groff-and-mom.pdf

Section 10, Groff l'ent

  There's a space after the l' in the section title: "l' ent".  Same
  thing in the third paragraph: "n' apparaissant".

Generally, I wouldn't spend so much space on piping text at the
command line through to groff (your poem, e.g.).  It's a lot to wade
through before getting to the important stuff, creating a groff file
in a text editor, which accounts for 99% of real-world usage.

Again, good work.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
http://www.schaffter.ca