On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 12:05:27PM +0100, Keith Marshall wrote:
> Subject: Re: [Groff] Typesetting Software
>
> On Thursday 04 June 2009 01:36:10 Steve Izma wrote:
> > Pdflatex is just a tool for
> > going from latex source files to PDF output --a convenience tool,
> > like lilypond --pdf; I think someone has crafted a shortform to
> > accomplish this with groff as well,
>
> I suspect you may be referring to my `pdfroff' tool here.
No, actually; I thought someone had come up with a kind of -Tpdf?
> > but given the filtering
> > abilities of groff (with PS output) and ps2pdf, this is pretty
> > trivial.
>
> While it is true that pdfroff can readily accomplish the trivial
> conversion from groff --> PostScript --> PDF, that is *not* what
> this tool is primarily about. The real reason for the creation of
> pdfroff was to facilitate the production of PDF documents including
> interactive cross references, as established through the use of the
> `pdfmark' macro set. The processing needed to implement that extra
> level of PDF functionality is anything but trivial, (and most of it
> occurs as multiple-pass groff processing, long before any PostScript
> is ever generated). Your throw away "this is pretty trivial" remark
> does rather tend to sell pdfroff (and pdfmark.tmac) short.
I'm familiar with your pdfroff and I think it's extremely
interesting, so I definitely didn't mean to trivialize that.
Pdfroff is going to become more and more important because of the
need for publishers to produce sophisticated PDFs with lots of
cross references and internal links for on-line reading and
e-book readers. We've got a series of books that I want to
enhance with pdfroff, but I've gotten stymied by the fact that
the author insists on unstructured subheadings. Instead of a
normal hierarchy (e.g., h1 h2 h2 h1 h2 h3 h3 h1, etc.) she
insists on sticking in subheads wherever she feels like giving
more emphasis to a section. It makes the table of contents look
very messy as well. Sometime soon I will look more closely at
pdfroff to try and work around this.
-- Steve
--
Steve Izma
-
Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener N2H 1W6 p:519-745-1313 FAX:519-579-9872
Work: Wilfrid Laurier University Press p:519-884-0710 ext. 6125
E-mail: si...@golden.net or st...@press.wlu.ca
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style>
