Re: [Groff] Eric Raymond on groff and TeX

[Peter Schaffter]

On Tue, May 08, 2012, Larry Kollar wrote:

> But I think there's room for a third kind of markup. I
> call it *humanist* markup. Humanist markup has structure —
> headings, lists, paragraphs, are easy to denote and
> separated from presentation. The markup is simple to
> transform to other languages. But in the end, the human can
> step in and override things when necessary, because in
> the end the humans know what they want. Macro packages
> can provide that kind of flexibility, where BDSM markup
> languages won't.

I'm in Larry's camp on this.  I wouldn't want to typeset a book
of contemporary poetry using structural markup, but neither would
I want to prepare a technical report with only presentational
markup (perish the thought).  Perhaps my bias is showing, but
it seems to me that all the major groff macrosets provide an
acceptable--sometimes exemplary--middle ground.  Humanist is
entirely the right word for it.

Larry's correct, too, about transforming groff markup to other
languages.  As Steve can attest, I think, it's generally simpler to
convert groff markup into acceptable XML than to produce good pdfs
from XML filtered through groff.

Looking forward to more on that, Steve.

-- 
Peter Schaffter

Author of The Binbrook Caucus
http://www.schaffter.ca