Re: [Groff] groff_ms.man

[Larry Kollar]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> wrote:

> > > The format texinfo uses is intentionally strict to give a uniform
> > > appearance for all manuals.
> > 
> > I don't mind the intentionally strict part, it's the outdated look
> > that I'm whining about.
> 
> Please explain.

Basically what I was going on about last night -- user guides
(these days) don't look anything like a Texinfo manual. (Note
that I am talking about look & feel rather than content here,
and yes I too would prefer content to pretty layout. But as a
tech writer, I want both.) 

Any manual larger than a pocket reference has body text indented
relative to its headings. This may not be typographically correct, 
but it allows a reader to scan the headings to quickly find the 
desired information -- assuming the content is well-written,
which it isn't in far too many cases. Headings are usually in a
different font from the body text, which koma-script does too. 
Tables get used a lot. Manuals often have a lot more white space
on the page than they used to. All these things make a manual
easier to read and comprehend. Even back in 1984, I wrote a macro
package that was primitive in a lot of ways (I used nroff to a
NEC Spinwriter) but even then it indented body text.

I'm getting fed up with WYSIWYG and its limitations in my old
age, and wondering why the heck I was so eager to abandon troff
back in 1985 (there was a troff clone at my second job that
printed directly to a LaserJet and I made it dance). I'd like
to take all the readability improvements that technical writers
have made in the last two decades and write a macro package
that supports all that but is still flexible. What Texinfo does
it does very well, but it doesn't try to do what I want.


> > If I have to deal with LaTeX at all, I fire up LyX. Now there's a
> > program that gets out of your way & lets you *write*.
> 
> Using LyX has *nothing* to do with the proper style file.

True. I was talking about using LaTeX in general rather than
selecting a style file. The LaTeX syntax is rather verbose
compared to, say, groff. OTOH, LyX is a semi-WYSIWYG editor
that doesn't distract you with page breaks, margins, or other
ephemera. It formats the text on-screen to show you what tag
you've applied, but that's about it. Simple, quick, and quite
productive once you get used to letting LyX worry about the
ephemera.

-- 
Larry Kollar   k o l l a r  at  a l l t e l . n e t
"Strange that people always suggest commercial systems when the
phrase 'mission critical' comes up." -- Sebastian Rahtz, on XML-Doc