text formatting tools.

[Chuck Robey]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Just felt like venting my own opinions on what's the current best toolset for
writing documents.  I think that this opinion isn't a popular one, but that's
what this list is for.  I'll give you all of my reasons, so at least you'll know
what to argue about, if you feel strongly about this.

Well, I think no one could argue that the most popular toolset is that based
upon xml and probably xsl.  When it first came out, I reacted very coolly
towards it, because while that xml/xsl approach could do everything my own
choice could do, the only available tools with either very expensive, or very
gigantic.

What's my choice?  I like to use groff for text formatting and page layout, xfig
for technical drawings, and something like inkscape for the more artistic
approach.  Let me get back to the comparisons.

I didn't want to get all that oud about xml/xsl, because I felt that given time,
hopefully, better tools would appear.  While the ability to spend money on that
has hugely expanded, and the number of incompatible macro sets have also hugely
appreared, the minimum size of any free software toolsets remains gigantic.  If
I'm wrong here, PLEASE, tell me, I would be only too happy to be proved wrong,
but I can't find any yet.  And don't think that if you give me one particular
tool that gets one particular part of the entire job and say that single part is
small, I will ignore you.  It's either all of the tools, or it's not, trying to
sneak in one small part is not an honest tactic to take.

Most of the ways I've ever seen require an entire TeX suite, which is probably
larger in itself than all the rest of FreeBSD all put together.  Take as
comparison the size of groff, which is really relatively tiny, but it takes the
exact same part of the job on (not based upon TeX, it's based upon the troff
command set.

Documentation?  Well, I could point to the book named "Unix Text Processing", by
 Dougherty/O'Reilly.  It's out of print, which is actually really pretty nice,
because the publisher decided that instead of reprinting it, they just release a
 PDF of it for free.  That's hugely good luck, because the book is totally
fantastic, not only covering all of the various pieces of groff, but also going
deep enough into the internal language so that you have no problem writing your
own macros.  Groff then leaves a key item, whether to base the formatting on
solely hierarchical features, or allowing one to do it all like a typist might
be expected to do, up to the writer, even allowing a pretty good amount of
flexibility to mix the 2 approaches.  Seeing as I personally don't really like
being handcuffed into a hierarchical document approach, I really like the freedom.

OK, I've described 2 of my reasons for liking it, that it's relatively tiny, and
that it's far more flexibile in allowing an author to take their own approach.
The fact that xml forces one to regard a document more like it is a database is
probably a good thing for things like Web pages which are actually electronic
salespeople, but it's a LOUSY method to force upon authors.  Most books just
aren't approached with preplanning and hierarchical control which is an endemic
requirement for a sales database tool.  So if you're not writing something like
"newegg.com", well, maybe you do like it, but I never, ever, heard of anyone
using any approach like this in any major piece of fiction, at least before some
businesses (in another case of follow the leaderism) required it.  Just like
many commercial companies require you use MicroSoft Word, nothing but marketing
propaganda.  Heard of this before?

I know we use this tool in our very good tool, the handbook.  So, what we've
done is deny to a large number of folks the ability to format the handbooks
unelss they're willing to install a set of enormous tools.  Used to be the
Handbook formatted directly out of the OS with no added tools needed.  Think
that's difficult for a non-fiction tool?  Ask Richard Stevens ghost, because his
books could have been formatted using only the base FreeBSD IS also.

OK, I don't know of any negative to using groff, except that you don't get to
point at your toolset and claim it's the latest.  All that internationalization,
it would not be terrifically difficult to write macros sets for groff that would
give the exact same effects, all done within the limits of FreeBSD's own tools.
 Groff even produces html, and it does a really bang-up job of formatting ASCII
text pages, something which xml tools have never been able to do.  I just don't
get the reason to go with xml, except a bad case of follow the leader.  What's
the benefit that the users, or even the authors, accrue?  And don't fail to
realize that our groff cames with a set of ancillary tools like "pic", to be a
very good job of doing technical drawings.  That's what Richard Stevens did, so
don't argue that it's either impossible, or even difficult to do well.  If you
argue this, please drop all the marketing propaganda, drop all references to
what it does for Web pages, lets talk about writing things intended for paper.
All those companies who base all their future on selling xml tools, they can't
be considered non-interested observers, this is where their bread and butter
comes from.  Argue about real things that are different in an xml versus groff
approach, from the point of view of non-database and non-sales oriented things.

God, the amount of marketing crap that has gone out to push dynamic features
(which web pages really do need) upon paper authors is impressive, but I never
saw any use of this in any piece of fiction, or even in any technical
dissertation, anything not destined for presentation via paper.  Many companies
depend on this for their future, so I'm skeptical.

Show me a book which needs these features, a book that would be better written
via an expensive hierarchical tool.  Pencils might be low-tech, but they also
allow folks without major finance to write, NOT using xml.  This is going to get
howls, but I really disliked our moving from a cheap, commonly available toolset
to a complicated monstrosity (which our handbook did) was a mistake in strategy,
trying to go the popular way.  Making it so the number of folks who can format
the sources is limited to folks which have the resources.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (FreeBSD)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkl7d8cACgkQz62J6PPcoOkDoACdHf2kmkqHU+FgXJHtCQDfAMbz
+O8An2PtC8sKSQ1pHXNYK2j6P7oayjuG
=RQLB
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----