Re: Learning troff - where to start?

[Damian McGuckin]

On Tue, 13 Oct 2020, Peter Schaffter wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 14, 2020, Damian McGuckin wrote:
> > How many people use features of 'groff' that are not in 'troff'?
>
> The mom macros rely heavily on extensions to groff that were implemented 
> during Werner's term.  Since many (most?) new groff users these days 
> gravitate towards mom, I'd say quite a lot of people rely on those 
> features.

Sorry, I was unclear. They 'rely' on them. And guru's like yourself 'use' 
them. My question should have been

        how many people directly 'use' features


Aren't those extensions hidden behind/under your excellent 'mom'?  Does 
your average user really need to learn underlying 'groff'. My 2c.

> I learned troff entirely from ctsr54.  It is not for nothing that it 
> remains the canonical starting point for exploring groff.

I have educated quite a few people to use groff by concentrating solely
on the interface that the Macros (and TBL and EQN) present. I did a 
tutorial document of how to use Troff/MM.  If I get some time, I might 
hack it to use MoM. The only groff commands it used were '.br', '.sp'
and '.so'.

> Prentice-Hall published _Troff Typesetting for UNIX Systems_
> (Emerson, Paulsel) in 1987.  It's still available online.  It might
> be the very thing the OP is looking for.

That reminds me I need to get Gehani's two volumes before they disappear 
from the face of the earth.

Regards - Damian

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