Re: Learning troff - where to start?

[Johann Höchtl]

Dear Peter,

while I first thought a follow-up question would warrant a separate thread,
now as you mention mom, I feel comfortable not to wander astray.

Of course I discovered mom and wow it looks feature-rich and very polished.
I wonder how big of an effort it would be to make it "portable".

Groff is certainly feature-rich, stable and polished with great
documentation. But I also value l8n, being able to input utf8-characters
directly into the source or easily switch fonts. Not to mention PAO
(paragraph-at-once) from Knuth-Plass. In that respect both Heirloom and
Neatroff are compelling alternatives and it would be great for mom if she
would be available there too.

Best, Johann

Am Mi., 14. Okt. 2020 um 03:10 Uhr schrieb Peter Schaffter <
peter@schaffter.ca>:

> 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.
>
> I learned troff entirely from ctsr54.  It is not for nothing that
> it remains the canonical starting point for exploring groff.
>
> 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.
>
> --
> Peter Schaffter
> https://www.schaffter.ca
>
>