Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX

[Clarke Echols]

I'm not competent at TeX -- haven't even seen TeX source
files for years.  I refer to troff source coded without
macros as "in-line" coding (normal text \f3bold text\f1 normal
text) where fonts are defined in a macro file or at the start
of the document.

For HTML and other SGML-like markups, the markup reveals the
structure of the text being modified, hence <h1>text</h1> is a
heading, <emphasis>text</emphasis> changes to the emphasis font
(italic in this case), or <strong>text</strong> for bold, but
what actually happens is defined by the Document Type Definition
(DTD).  HTML is a DTD operating under SGML (Standard Generalized
Markup Language), which is an industry/government standard.

I tend to avoid the term "structural markup language" because it
can be confusing due to variations in how different people use it
when writing about typesetting and text formatting.

Macros come closer to "structural", but really aren't.  They're
more a shorthand method to save typing, and give control over the
end result by allowing programming a macro file -- thus allowing
different processing for different output devices, for example, or
being able to instantly change an entire document with a few changes
in the file instead of throughout a document.

I always use macros to some degree, even in a one-page document for
simplification of typing.  I don't use the usual MS, ME, and other
macro files because they don't fit my needs.

I also hand-program XHTML and CSS for website work instead of using
content-management systems like Joomla, Drupal, or WordPress.

Clarke

On 05/03/2012 09:21 AM, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> I  accidently  came  upon what seems to me an unfair
> judgement about groff and TeX:
>
>      As an example: In a presentation-markup lan-
>      guage,  if you want to emphasize a word, you
>      might instruct the formatter to  set  it  in
>      boldface.  In  troff(1) this would look like
>      so:
>
>          All your base
>          .B are
>          belong to us!
>
>      In a structural-markup language,  you  would
>      tell the formatter to emphasize the word:
>
>          All your base<emphasis>are</emphasis>  belong to us!
>
>      The  "<emphasis>" and</emphasis>in the line
>      above are called markup tags, or  just  tags
>      for short. They are the instructions to your
>      formatter.
>
>      In a structural-markup language, the  physi-
>      cal  appearance  of the final document would
>      be controlled by a stylesheet .  It  is  the
>      stylesheet  that  would  tell  the formatter
>      "render emphasis as a font change  to  bold-
>      face".  One  advantage  of structural-markup
>      languages is that by changing  a  stylesheet
>      you  can globally change the presentation of
>      the document (to use  different  fonts,  for
>      example)  without having to hack all the the
>      individual instances of (say) .B in the doc-
>      ument itself.
>
> Source:
>
>      http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DocBook-Demystification-HOWTO/x69.html
>
> Should  we, maybe, ask the author to correct it, for
> I think, groff and TeX macro packages do  provide  a
> means  for  structural mark-up, and, considering the
> example above, it is of course possible to  redefine
> the  macro  .B  to  achieve the desired result?  For
> clarity, it could also be renamed as "EMPH".
>
> In my understanding, a package  provides  both  con-
> structs  for  structural mark-up and means to modify
> their underlying "presentation", and the one is very
> loosely  coupled  with the other, allowing to change
> "presentation" without affecting the "structure" and
> vice versa...
>
> Anton