Re: eqn sqrt and pdf?

[John Gardner]

Hi Marc,

Even without seeing the PDF output, I'd say you have one or more fonts
missing from your installation path. Do you have GhostScript installed?

Also, you can debug formatted output by calling groff with its -Z switch.
You should see something like this:

$ eqn -Tpdf | groff -Tpdf -Z
x T pdf
x res 72000 1 1
x init
x F /usr/local/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/eqnrc
x F -
p1
V18788
H72000
DFd
x font 11 S
f11
s10000
…


If you don't see a line that looks like `x font 11 S` (referring to the
"Symbol" font that contains special characters like square-root symbols),
then it's more than a simple font-installation issue.

also: i think the TeX math syntax is much more pleasant than the eqn one.
> is there a performance/simplicity reason to that?


Possibly the latter; eqn(1) predates TeX by several years, so if history
had've been different, maybe eqn would've been modelled off a subset of TeX
syntax instead. (Though I'm no fan of TeX, I do agree that its equations
are much nicer to read and write than eqn markup. It's literally the only
thing I like about the TeX system).

is there something like a tex2eqn so i can maintain tex equations instead
> of eqn ones?


None that I know of, though it probably wouldn't be too difficult to smash
together a Perl script to preprocess TeX equations. I'd be interested in
knowing if any such preprocessor already exists, however.

On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 at 19:46, Marc Chantreux <address@hidden> wrote:

> hello people,
>
> I try to get a correct rendering for this simple eqn
>
>     .EQ
>     sqrt a over sqrt c
>     .EN
>
> first i tried
>
>     eqn -Tpdf|groff -Tpdf
>
> and noticed that the begin of the square root symbol is replaced by a
> rectangle that goes down to the bottom of the symbol.
>
> also i tried
>
>     eqn |groff ; ps2pdf14
>
> the ps rendering is fine but the pdf one got the same issue.
>
> for the moment i have a very limited knowledge about troff, ps and pdf.
> can someone please help me?
>
> also: i think the TeX math syntax is much more pleasant than the eqn
> one. is there a performance/simplicity reason to that? if not so:
> is there something like a tex2eqn so i can maintain tex equations
> instead of eqn ones?
>
> regards,
> marc
>
>