Re: [Groff] *roff for desktop publishing - is it feasible?

[Peter Schaffter]

On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, Gerard Lally wrote:
> > Would I consider tackling the illustrated page?  No way, my
> > sense of responsible typography forbids it.
> 
> Well the sample is meaningless; I searched for a "desktop publishing"
> image and chose that one at random as a reasonably complex example of
> what I had in mind.

Good thing you said that.  I had to bite my tongue not to comment on
the extraordinarily poor layout. :)

> Good typography is one of the reasons I am hoping to standardize
> on *roff.  It's going to be a lifetime commitment for me.  I can see
> its value with regard to normal document formatting, but I was
> curious to know whether it could be pushed to handle more complex
> DTP, brochure and business card layouts.

Further to my other reply, I worked extensively with both page
layout programs and "blind" typesetting systems (formatting inserted
into plain text, like groff) when I was at Les Maîtres Typographes
in Montréal.  We found it was orders of magnitude faster to do
catalogue pages, brochures, DVD covers, and the like with a page
layout program.  Equally, it was vastly more efficient to do things
like books, annual reports, and technical documentation using a
groff-like system.

IOW, neither a page layout program nor groff is one-size-fits-all,
although, bottom line, groff will provide you with better control
over the typography.

If you're truly committed to groff for this kind of work, consider
using the mom macros, which provide a very fine-grained "front-end"
to the typographic side of things.

Hope this, and everyone else's comments, are of assistance.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
http://www.schaffter.ca