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Old 9th November 2008
drhowarddrfine drhowarddrfine is offline
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These are the sort of discussions that leave me confused as to what to study. On my list of things to learn is troff/groff/nroff/tex/latex and I'm not sure what to choose or where to start. I always find articles and postings that do what seems to be done above, that is, "troff can do anything you want better"/"I don't know if it's worth learning anymore" and "Latex isn't as good"/"No one can accept your troff files" or "Everyone uses Latex"/"It can't do what you want". (Don't take all that literally.)

This rocking back and forth makes me unsure what to take up first and what's worth pursuing later. I think, I think, I want to be able to markup my text that can be easily published, or at least easily translated to postscript or pdf (or even Word/OO?). As an assembly language programmer, I like working with the simple basics of handling raw code but I don't want to waste my time with something no one can use, or no one uses anymore. I even get confused with the differences between the different roffs.

Does it all boil down to this compilation from DrJ above?
Quote:
I learned it by writing everything in raw troff...I don't know if that sort of effort is worth it these days...an investment in TeX might be better if you are looking to publish or exchange source files with other authors...
Is this summary my answer to whether I should bother with the roffs?
Quote:
it really does suck to have to translate the code to TeX, and then diddle with it, to publish anything. There are enough hurdles to getting articles out the door already.
I should not bother with the roffs and just learn TeX?
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