On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 04:30:04PM +0000, Tuomo Valkonen wrote: > On 2007-03-20, Joerg van den Hoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > what file? the markupped text? I don't think that `ms' markup is harder (or > > easier) to understand than latex markup. > > It is very much harder: just look at the example you posted. Do you consider > that readable? Aside from the command names being totally unintelligible
that starts to develop in a "I'll have the last word" exchange (well I try to :-)): if you markup the posted example with latex, the content vs. markup ratio would not be better, but worse. if you really start to write a paragraph, that will be simple continous and perfectly readable text in the source file, be it in groff, be it in latex. arguing groff vs. latex is like battling whether emacs or vi is better (I know, you'd say they suck both and one should use joe). everything I've heard against 'groff -ms' in this exchange is a matter-of taste decision against it using arguments which would be equally suited to propose dumping manpages written in -man. > pairs of characters, even the flow breaks all the time with the commands > starting a new line. come on: "unintelligible pairs of characters" in contrast to ion3 keyboard shortcuts which lend themselves immediately to memorizing??? I'd estimate that I continously use about 10-20 ion3 keybindings and probably fewer `-ms' names. I still manage to handle that... > > > looking at the documentation as a prerequisite of generating a > > sensible document: would you say that is different from latex??? > > A sensible LaTeX document can be edited to a large extend without > knowing any LaTeX, by aping what is there already, as it is quite > intelligible. Not so with *roff. correct for you because you know latex. the other way round for me because I know groff. what kind of criterion is that? and this trails off: latex would not be an option here, I'd say, if we want to maintain formattting into the terminal. that tex/latex altogether is the more powerful formatter than groff: yeah, could be, but that's irrelevant in the present context (and usually becomes only notable with the better support of table-of-content, auto-generated indexes, auto-generated dynamic running headers/footers and such). I would say the central question presently is: how can I get both, optimal terminal output _and_ professional publication quality pdf (plus html, maybe). > > > concerning "understanding" the latex source: I will give you that latex > > markup > > is much more verbose (which I don't like: I have to type it or make lots of > > vi shortcuts or what else) and therefore one could easier guess that > > It's not that verbose: You don't write the longer commands that often, > paragraph separation is an empty line, etc. You also don't have to you could do that in groff the same way. > break the flow all the time unlike with *roff. (Yeah, there's also > some inline syntax at least in -man, but it's quite awful HT/XML-like > begin/end tag stuff.) beauty is in the eye of the beholder... > > > ... > > > Anyway, the original idea indeed was that of an _interactive_ tutorial. I'd rather get a mutt-like _comprehensive_ user manual which contrary to the above idea would stay useful even for the permanent ion3-user. the kind of really basic interactive tutorial, which seems to be more the intent as I now see, probably will be used (and be useful) only at the very first day of using ion3. that's a waste of effort in my view. so, please stay at least with 'man/ groff -man' (but why that in contrast to `groff -ms' is tolerable remains obscure to me), don't use non-standard third party stuff which would create additional dependencies. if you still answer this, the last word in this matter is yours. promise. :-) joerg
