> > I learned troff entirely from ctsr54. It is not for nothing that > it remains the canonical starting point for exploring groff.
I strongly second this. Newcomers should at least be comfortable changing fonts, adjusting margins, and controlling paragraph filling/adjustment. Then they'll move on to macros, strings, and registers. After that, the difference between macros and requests will be obvious; Users will also realise why macro packages are there in the first place — the Roff language is too cumbersome for everyday document preparation. When I first learned to use Groff, I was confused over the differences between .Sh / .SH, .TH / .Dt, .B / \fB … "overlapping" features I assumed were all part of the same opaque format (one designed specifically for man page display). Now, had I started with CSTR #54 instead of man page tutorials <https://liw.fi/manpages/>, I might've learned early on that Troff *isn't* merely simply a backend for man(1), that man(7) and mdoc(7) are exclusive of each other, and tbl(1) markup *wasn't* part of the Roff language. Can you imagine how confused I was before I learned about preprocessors? IMHO, mastering Troff is less about knowing what each part does, and more about where/how each part fits with everything else. On Wed, 14 Oct 2020 at 12:10, Peter Schaffter <pe...@schaffter.ca> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 14, 2020, Damian McGuckin wrote: > > How many people use features of 'groff' that are not in 'troff'? > > The mom macros rely heavily on extensions to groff that were > implemented during Werner's term. Since many (most?) new groff > users these days gravitate towards mom, I'd say quite a lot of > people rely on those features. > > I learned troff entirely from ctsr54. It is not for nothing that > it remains the canonical starting point for exploring groff. > > Prentice-Hall published _Troff Typesetting for UNIX Systems_ > (Emerson, Paulsel) in 1987. It's still available online. It might > be the very thing the OP is looking for. > > -- > Peter Schaffter > https://www.schaffter.ca > >
