[Groff] groff | ConTeXt

[Gour]

Hi!

Last week I had an email echange with Alejandro after asking for a vim syntax
file for ConTeXt package and we've arrived at the discussion regarding
groff/ConTeXt.

<disclaimer>
I'd like to get some more input regarding groff | ConTeXt issue, but pls.
be assured I do not have any intention to provide flame war - just want to
get some objective input in deciding which typesetting system to use for my
needs.
</disclaimer>

In the past I was using LaTeX (with LyX) for my typesetting and produced two
printed books with it. However I faced the problem of clash between different
LaTeX packages and therefore decided to try with ConTeXt macro package since it
is produced in one place - no clashes - and provides pretty complete package
for an end-user, as it is -- out-of-the-box.

It has pretty good support for XML and, after some exchange with the author,
now it's possible to use Unicode chars in utf-8 encoding (although the encoding
vector is not fully populated, it satisfies my present needs).

To be able to exchange my documents with other users I need XML and 1st I was
considering DocBook, but because of the nature of my docs (educational
material, articles ..) I am strongly considering TEI, especially because the
new version P5 will be modular and enable one to use other tags according to
one's need.

So, the typical chain looks like:

            some transformation (XSLT/some script)
TEI (DocBook) ----------------------------->  ConTeXt (groff) ----> PDF
                                                |                      |
                                                ---> X(HTML)           ---> PS
                                                |
                                                ---> some other output format

Since there is no present TEI (DocBook) back-end neither for groff nor ConTeXt
(there are actually DocBookInConTexT & db2context, but nothing for TEI), I'd
like to get some input how can groff compare with ConTeXt?

I went through groff manual & mom docs, but I still have some unresolved
issues:

a) how does groff output in general compare with the Tex quality (page output,
orphans, widows, paragraphs, lines, kerning ...)?

b) what about hyphenation rules for non-English texts? (besides English, I use
Croatian as well as Sanskrit diacritics and the Croatian is very well
hyphenated with the help of hrhyph.tex. Somewhere in groff's docs I've noted
that groff uses some simpler rules.)

c) in ConTeXt I can use TeX, type1 & ttf fonts, but Alejandro wrote me that in
order to use ttf I need Type 42 PS wrapper. Is it good enough?

d) is there something like babel language package for groff, taking care for
different languages, i.e. translating common strings (section, contents ..) as
well as taking care of proper input/output encoding?  (both in LaTeX & ConTeXt
I can enter Croatian chars directly from the keyboard).

e) since I have multi-language requirements, what is the present status of
utf-8 support in groff, and what are the plans for the future?

f) is groff actively developed or is it more in a maintenance status?

g) what about the docs? (ConTeXt has several manuals, although I have to
congratulate for groff-1.19.pdf - didn't find it at once since it is not
included in my Gentoo docs)

h) when working with LaTeX I used xindy indexing package. It also works with
ConTeXt and it can handle utf-8 (see http://tbookdtd.sourceforge.net/). Does
anyone uses xindy with groff (one just require to translate xindy's raw index
file into groff's)

i) I must confess that groff's macro language leaves better impression on my
mind than TeX's (I never did any TeX programming and was just using available
LaTex packages and ConTeXt features), and therefore I consider it could be that
a task of writing TEI back-end for groff could be easier to accomplish than for
ConTeXt, but I'm interested is there anybody interested for such a back-end
and/or how is it easy to achieve the same ConTeXt functionality in groff in
regards to features and quality of paper output? 


Pls. excuse me for a somewhat lengthy post.

Sincerely,
Gour

-- 
Gour 
address@hidden 
Registered Linux User #278493