Re: [Groff] Does groff match my needs?

[hohe72]

Joh-Tob Schäg <address@hidden> wrote (Wed, 11 Nov 2015 17:32:47
+0100):
> Dear groff-mailing list,
> 
> i seached for an alternative to latex and found groff. Sadly i found
> no IRC or something where i could ask directly.
> But before i invest time in groff or some macro system, i wanted to
> know if it fits my needs.
> These are:
> -support for ä,ü,ö,Ä...
\[:a],\[:u],\[:o],\[:A],..
use preconv in order to translate from an encoding as utf8 to the groff
representation above; -D, -K, -k switches to groff are equivalent
Have a look at 'man groff' and 'man grof_char' for the chars.

> -supporting word division for german (possible compound) words
watch out for hyphenation requests:
.hy, .hla and .hpf

> -supports A4 paper format
Most tricky because you have to watch out at every transformation
step: in groff, from groff to PS and from PS to pdf. For custom sizes,
this is a worst case, you might need to know ghostscript commandlines.

> -export as pdf
Use psutils or directly produce pdf. (I don't use the latter, but want
to recommend it.)

> Are these features supported?
So far yep. Groff provides more than my laser is able to print.

  Be patiently in learning. Attempting to gain quick success in running
plain-groff, what is a equivalent to the low level Tex, might become
traumatic.
  Groff uses standard settings quite plenty. That makes things
easy, at first. However, the word processor you use behaves literally
"quite", such that it is usually not easy to know either "what" or even
"if" something went wrong. Step by step is the key.
  Consider wrapping the call to groff at a shell script. You have
less typing, don't need to remember commandlines, can rearrange a
TOC from the end of a generated PS-file to the begining (psselect),
preprocess files for later being included using .so or even source
your groff-files for options to process with, what you'd written in a
groff-comment at the file.
  mom, mm, ms are groff-macro packages -- that I'm unfamiliar with :|
  BTW, groff performs a typesetter.

> Sincerly,
> address@hidden

Good look,
Holger H.