Hello Gour, Gour <g...@atmarama.com> wrote:
> I just wonder how Troff/Heirloom does compare with Mom package when it comes > to > quality typesetting (aka 21th century needs)? Mom is a macro set, while Troff/Heirloom is the interpreter of the macro set, so, we can't compare things like this. A proper comparision would be between Groff, Heirloom Troff, and Neatroff on one side, and Mom, Utmac, ms, me, on the other side. 1) For typographic purposes (and for typographic purposes only), Heirloom Troff and Neatroff are, in my opinion, far better than Groff, because they adjust paragraphs "at once". Comparing between Neatroff and Heirloom would need a set of examples, but at a first glance, I'd say that while on the paper Heirloom has some more features (micro-typography), its adjustment algoritm is also bugged, and I would tend to favor Neatroff. 2) With some hacks if not out of the box, Mom probably works well enough on Neatroff to take advantage of its features. It would need much more work to port it on Heirloom Troff because of the needed \P line trap I wrote about on one of my mails. 3) If you want to compare macros for typographic purpose only, I would advise you to look at the vertical alignment, ie, headings should not break the vertical grid. I know that Utmac takes care of it (if the alignment is broken, it is a bug), I don't know for Mom, but since Peter Schafter has a taste for typography, I believe he did take care about that too. The other typographic things (such as fonts), will be more easily adjusted if they don't fit your needs. 4) All this being said, there are many other things than typography that you should consider when choosing a macro set and a troff intepreter: long term maintenance, easiness to use and install, performances of the pre- and post- processors, configurability, layout, syntax, and a myriad of other things. All those things considered the couple groff/mom is a very solid choice. Kind Regards, Pierre-Jean.
