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

[Gerard Lally]

On Mon, 24 Oct 2016, at 04:58, Clarke Echols wrote:
> Twenty years ago, I used troff to create camera-ready artwork for a 
> double-sided
> printed circuit card for a product I was designing the control 
> electronics and
> bar-graph display for.  The product was awarded "Top 20 new automotive
> service tools of the year" in Motor Magazine for 1997.  (Alas, the owner 
> of the
> company stiffed me $30,000 for my work, and another company $70,000.)
> It was also featured on the PBS TV show "Motorweek".
> 
> I wrote the macros for the layout, using primarily troff drawing
> requests.
> 
> I've used troff and groff to produce finished books (historical fiction
> and
> non-fiction), and HP's 3000-page, 3-volume HP-UX Reference (Unix
> manpages)
> and everything from business cards to trophy plaques.
> 
> Sometimes it's more work than one can justify financially, but like most
> Unix stuff, there's a lot of power there if you have the tenacity and 
> ingenuity
> to figure out how to do what you need done.
> 
> But that sample page with all of the artwork is beyond my expertise for
> now.

Your positive feedback in this and other posts in the archive is very
welcome, Clarke. Indeed just last week I bought a copy of your vi book;
I know it's old but it comes highly recommended, and I think a solid
grounding in the old Unix tools is a great way to prepare for a lifetime
of document production.

The consensus so far is that a complex page layout is possible but not
feasible. It's not worth the trouble, but I don't mind that. I really
just wanted to know whether or not it was possible (should have made
that clear in the subject header). It means that, if push comes to shove
somewhere down the line, *roff can handle a reasonably complex layout. I
don't expect to need it to this extent, but I'm happy to know with some
"tenacity and ingenuity" I could pull it off if required.