On 12 September 2010 20:25, Akshat <aku...@mail.nanosouffle.net> wrote: > If you like the cleanliness and simplicity of troff files for writing > papers, and would like to avoid the hideousness of TeX, then you might want > to try Lout. I ported it to Plan 9 earlier this year and just copied it to > my contrib: contrib/akumar/lout.tgz > > > Best of luck, > ak
Thanks for the idea. Actually I was considering this a while ago. I even printed out the manual.(I have lout in linux.) However, from what I read there I gained the feeling that -- it doesn't know utf (thus you can't really just write a single letter 'alpha' as you can in troff) -- it somehow seems to be an 'all together software' (as opposed to tbl/pic/eqn/...), which I don't like. -- the syntax for writing math is more complicated than in eqn. The syntax is rather closer to TeX, which I wanted to avoid, though the results, I feel, are no better than eqn's. True, I haven't actually tried the software much. May be that I am also wrong in some points. Well, don't take me wrong. I have not much against (plain)TeX. When I was about 15 and got a printed version of TeXBook, METAFONT, I was amazed. Its documentation can't be better (nothing to compare to anything). The algorithms are superior. It's not so big either (although today's distributions are horrible, >1GB [this I really hate]; but the core, as someone here is trying to put up, is fine; I mean KerTeX or what). It's only that troff is even much simpler and yet good enough. And also that the notation is much more human. Making a table with tbl or a simple graph with grap is a pleasure. Equations written for eqn can be read back from the source, without seeing millions of \\\\\\\.This is, I would say, what totally grabbed me. And the documentation as written by Kernighan is also awesome --- short, answers many potential questions right away, explains things clearly. This is why I also like plan 9, generally (though almost whatever I try doesn't work). TeX is very 'strict', precise; but you must have a good knowledge of it to talk it into something. Troff is more straightforward, simpler, and is more fun, some things are playful, e.g. traps. Thanks Ruda
