From owner-freebsd-doc Tue Jun 4 18:26:31 1996 Return-Path: owner-doc Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA29806 for doc-outgoing; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 18:26:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov (gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov [137.75.131.181]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA29800 for ; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 18:26:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from emu.fsl.noaa.gov (kelly@emu.fsl.noaa.gov [137.75.60.32]) by gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id BAA11608; Wed, 5 Jun 1996 01:26:27 GMT Message-Id: <199606050126.BAA11608@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov> Received: by emu.fsl.noaa.gov (1.40.112.3/16.2) id AA025027986; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 19:26:27 -0600 Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 19:26:27 -0600 From: Sean Kelly To: peter@taronga.com Cc: doc@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199606050020.TAA18778@bonkers.taronga.com> (peter@taronga.com) Subject: Re: How do I write this SGML stuff? Sender: owner-doc@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >>>>> "Peter" == Peter da Silva writes: Peter> In article <199606042153.VAA10567@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov> Peter> you write: >> Given that we already can go to LaTeX which can go to >> professionally typeset documents, why do we need to also go to >> troff which can go to professionally typeset documents? Peter> Because TeX is soggy and hard to light, and troff doesn't stay crispy in milk. The score: 0 to 0. Peter> producing huge amounts of gibberish output in which real Peter> error messages (which are likely bogus anyway) are almost Peter> impossible to find. Absolutely right. troff wins a point. Peter> Because some people *prefer* the output of Peter> troff/groff. And some people prefer the output of TeX. Score unchanged. Peter> Because Computer Modern doesn't look very nice Peter> on 300 dpi and lower devices Another judgement call. 11 point CM roman works quite well for me at 300 dpi whereas Adobe Times Roman at the same size doesn't. So, score remains unchanged. Peter> and TeX doesn't get along well with Adobe fonts. I've run TeX with Adobe fonts for a number of years. While it was painful in the beginning, such is not the case today. Since troff was around before Adobe fonts were, I'm sure it suffered some ups & downs as well. So the final score is troff 1, TeX 0. But it still doesn't answer the question. If the DTD and the replacement rules are up to snuff, it doesn't matter whether we go to TeX, troff, Scribe, or who knows what. The end result is a nicely typeset document, and the LaTeX results seemed adequate. I don't see why supporting an additonal output format that has similar end results is necessary. So, I asked why. :-) -- Sean Kelly NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory kelly@fsl.noaa.gov Boulder Colorado USA http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/~kelly/