On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 06:07:21PM +0200, Marc Chantreux wrote:
> hello Mike,
>
> first of all: pardon my lack of culture but i don't get what "RL" means
> in this case. i suppose it's a way to say you replied intentionally to
> me and not to the mailing list but have no confirmation of that�.
RL has to do with the mail filtering I have.
It means nothing to anyone else.
> it is sad that the rest of the mailing list can't read this very
> interesting answer.
That was a goof on my part. I'll add the groff mailing list to this response.
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 10:44:53AM -0400, Mike Bianchi wrote:
> > I would suggest you turn the list upside down and start with something that
> > _works_ even if not to your liking.
>
> i gave roff a try in circa 2000 and i hated it. i started again since
> the begin of the year because i love the man command and wanted to write
> my own manuals.
>
> it quickly appeared to me that
>
> * compared to the other typesettings systems (including the very
> overated TeX), troff isn't that bad.
> * my only sine qua none is fixed by the -k flag
> * now understand that some syntax "limitations" actually really
> ease many automations
> * nothing compares when it comes to be fast and lightweight.
>
> so i started using mm, me and ms and got results that are far enough
> for me but if i want to go further, i should be abble to tune the
> documents to comform the visual chart of my employees for exemple.
>
> if i can be good enough at it, maybe i can introduce roff in the
> communities i work for.
> > The *roff commands are an _assembly_ language with lots of hidden states,
> > arcane rules and interactions. It's value is that it works and that _lots_
> > of
> > smart people mastered it to such a degree that some _really_ clever things
> > have
> > been done with it. Macro sets are the means of doing the clever things.
>
> to explicit one question i have: should a high level macro set rely on
> lower level ones like ms (as it seems ms is't as rich and opiniated than
> me, mm and mom)?
I strongly recommend you pick one macro set, read and become fluent in the
the concepts in the command macros manual for that set and use the built-in
tuning features to make them look the way you want. You are _not_ the first
person to want it "just like that, but different" and you will find that the
macros sets are built with fine-tuning in mind. I have used the mm package
since it's invention and have always used a set of its fine-tunings to make
it specific to my needs.
export GROFF_TMAC_PATH=${HOME}/lib/tmac
groff -Kutf8 -GtpeR -U -rW6.5i -mm -mFm ...files...
where Fm refers to the "Foveal macros" that tune the mm macros. They are
found in ${HOME}/lib/tmac/Fm.tmac .
There I have things like:
\# A mark list of checkoff boxes.
.de CheckList
.ML "\s+8\(sq\s0 " 7
..
.de CheckListEnd
. LE 1
..
> > Said another way, many have gone before you and pushed the rock far up the
> > mountain.
>
> i'll take my time on it as i'm convinced mastering troff is worth it.
>
> > Skim and then re-read the *roff command manual of your choice.
> > I suggest groff.
> > ... [you describe a interesting path there ] ...
>
> thanks for this widsom. I just copied m.tmac as ike.tmac and will
> modify/tune it until the documents i already written fit the look
> i acheived in my demo.
I advise _against_ modifying the standard *.tmac files, especially with the
sets like me , ms and mm . They rarely change, but when they do you loose
the benefit of the fixes.
> > When you think you have the basics down, go to the macro package of your
> > choice
> > and attempt to understand the simple macros for the simple concepts. I use
> > mm so I would start with
> >
> > .P Paragraphs
> > .SP line SPacing
> > .HU Header Unnumbered
> > .R Roman font
> > .B .I Bold Italic
>
> i'll do that one by one.
>
> > ((From someone who has been writing nroff/troff/groff since the late
> > 1970s.))
>
> impresive :)
No. Just old.
> in a sense, i envy you: it feels to me that computers were about for and real
> hobbists back then so the digital culture was much more inspiring than
> nowadays.
I was fortunate enough to be at Bell Labs when the UNIX Programmer's Work Bench
was happening and in one of the first groups to do our PL/I code development on
a UNIX PWB machine that took the place of a card puncher, punch card reader and
printer. Said another way, it was a work environment making use of a new
Bell Labs innovation. It led into a career.
> �: The New Hacker's Dictionary definition of RL is "Real life"
> (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/RL.html)
--
Mike Bianchi
Foveal Systems
973 822-2085
mbian...@foveal.com
http://www.AutoAuditorium.com
http://www.FovealMounts.com
