From owner-freebsd-doc Sun Nov 8 15:47:56 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA08174 for freebsd-doc-outgoing; Sun, 8 Nov 1998 15:47:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA08169; Sun, 8 Nov 1998 15:47:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id KAA09038; Mon, 9 Nov 1998 10:16:47 +1030 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) id KAA07568; Mon, 9 Nov 1998 10:16:42 +1030 (CST) Message-ID: <19981109101642.A499@freebie.lemis.com> Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 10:16:42 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: Nik Clayton , nik@FreeBSD.ORG, doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: TeX problems; Doc. Proj. needs you! References: <19981107211415.05931@nothing-going-on.org> <19981108100712.V499@freebie.lemis.com> <19981108001932.19745@nothing-going-on.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1i In-Reply-To: <19981108001932.19745@nothing-going-on.org>; from Nik Clayton on Sun, Nov 08, 1998 at 12:19:32AM +0000 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sunday, 8 November 1998 at 0:19:32 +0000, Nik Clayton wrote: > On Sun, Nov 08, 1998 at 10:07:12AM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: >> On Saturday, 7 November 1998 at 21:14:15 +0000, Nik Clayton wrote: >>> Calling all TeX hackers, your Documentation Project needs you. > [...] >> I did some playing around with this a couple of years ago. At that >> time, it was possible to convert the sgml stuff into either TeX or >> *roff source. I tried both routes to PostScript, and found the >> appearance of the *roff-derived version to be superior. There's >> something about stuff which has been formatted with TeX which shouts >> "look at me, I've been formatted with TeX". > > True enough. That could just be people using similar styles, fonts, and > so on. Definitely. I know it's possible to use different styles and fonts with TeX, but a lot of people seem to find it too difficult. > It gets pretty easy to spot web pages that have been processed by > Norm Walsh's DocBook HTML stylesheets as well :-) Hmm. Not a recommendation. >> In addition to that, I consider TeX to be a piece of *(&$*. This is >> not lack of experience: I used TeX for years before being forcibly >> converted to *roff. If there's any interest in going the *roff path, >> count me in. > > Chuck Robey's mailed me and expressed interest in doing this, but says > he won't be able to get to it for 45 days or so, because of real world > commitments. If you wanted to liase with him that would be great. We'll follow up this one offline. > I think the most useful contribution would be a *roff backend for Jade, > because we then have something that's not tied to any one DTD. I have > no idea how difficult that would be to do, and involves C++ (you may > or may not consider that a plus). Failing that, anything that can > read DocBook and spit it *roff is good, and will be greeted with open > arms. Ugh. I've started. I didn't realize there was so much work to be done. > Can we go from *roff to PDF? Looks like you'd have to go via .dvi. Presumably there's a DVI driver for PDF. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message