Re: [Groff] Groff and computer education

[Anton Shepelev]

Steve Izma

> James  Lowden  sent  me, off list, this link to an
> article he wrote about the relevance of  groff  to
> fundamental  concepts  of programming and computer
> use.  I assume he's too modest  to  broadcast  it,
> but I think it's excellent:
> [...]

My thanks to James and to you, Steve.

Back in the University, everybody I knew used exclu-
sively MS Word, and doing a couple of term papers in
it  got me tired and annoyed to a headache, although
I think I used its basic functionality  like  styles
appropriately.   So  when  the  time for the diploma
came, I said to myself I would do it LaTeX, which at
that time I didn't know at all.

I encountered the same problems as James's daughter,
because the default LaTeX output was very  far  from
the  handicapped  version of the Russian standard we
had to adhere to, so I registered  with  FIDO7  (the
Russian FIDO branch) and subscribed to a Tex-related
group, whose members helped me  customize  LaTeX  as
was required.  It was very difficult for a beginner,
but I didn't give up.  Next was the problem of  text
exchange, but that only enhanced my discipline.

In  the  end, it all payed off.  While others had to
painfully go through the whole document  to  fix  it
after  incorporating even small changes, in LaTeX it
was easy.  The bigger the document, the more evident
was its superiority over Word.

Anton