Re: [Groff] groff v. TeX

[Larry Kollar]

John Poltorak wrote:

> Can anyone explain what the differences are between groff and TeX and
> which, if either would be most suitable for producing a magazine?

They're both typesetters that use plain text files with embedded  
markup to produce output. Both use macro packages to avoid dealing  
with the raw language. Both do a better job of typesetting than other  
Free or commercial offerings (with the possible exception of InDesign  
and the real top-shelf typesetters). In general, these are the  
differences as I see them:

* groff is faster; TeX's typesetting is a bit better (especially math)

* groff uses a combination of in-line and whole line markup; TeX is  
in-line only

* TeX's markup is more verbose

* LaTeX, the most popular macro package for TeX, severely restricts  
the type of page layouts and styles; groff is somewhat less restrictive

* groff outputs a wider variety of media: PS, PDF, HTML, and text;  
TeX is primarily PS and PDF, although there are external conversion  
scripts for HTML

I'm not which which (if either) would be most suitable for producing  
a magazine -- they tend to not have a consistent layout from page to  
page, and you'll have to write some macro magic to flow text around  
pictures, sidebars, and so forth. For anything else, it comes down to  
which one that works best for you & your needs. I learned *roff near  
the beginning of my technical writing career, and I recently switched  
back to groff from FrameMaker. It takes one or two minutes to produce  
PDFs for a 4-volume set of documents running over 750 pages, a job  
that literally took an entire afternoon on my old computer running  
Frame & would still need nearly an hour to complete on the new computer.

--
Larry Kollar     k  o  l  l  a  r  @  a  l  l  t  e  l  .  n  e  t
Unix Text Processing: "UTP Revival"
http://unixtext.org/