Quote:
Originally Posted by thirdm
I used groff with .me macros for an adult ed creative writing course this year. I'm debating going over to LaTeX on the theory it should have more advanced text spacing algorithms and hyphenate less.
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Each discipline has its own preferable text processing tool. In mathematics (I am mathematician) that is TeX or to be more precise LaTeX set of macros for TeX. Full stop. The fact that I can produce decent quality output using Groff is irrelevant. All papers and manuscripts MUST be submitted in TeX using LaTeX macros. There are no more than half dozen places which would accept for instance AMS TeX macros for TeX not to be confused with AMS extension of LaTeX.
In Biology for instance you MUST use M$ Word. Full stop. Nobody is going to read anything written in anything else.
Groff was used until 1992-3 by O'Reilly to produce its computer manuscripts. Then even O'Reilly who could not stand TeX and always championed Groff switched to essentially a DocBook (their own version) which is also more recently rediscovered as M$ 2007 Office Formats
The bottom line is. If you know to use Groff use it. If you don't but you are in the need of the serious text processing tool talk to people in your field before you invest any serious amount of time in learning something. If you want to write mathematics, physics, astronomy and similar subjects do not bother with anything else but TeX. Nobody will even look documents which are not produced in TeX in these fields.