russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence) (05/03/89)
I've just started working with troff and would like to become more
adept at writing/changing macros. Could someone recommend a few good
books and articles? Thanks.
--
Russell Lawrence, WP Group, New Orleans (504) 443-5000
{uunet,killer}!wpg!russlfk@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Lee Kolakowski) (05/03/89)
The best Book around is the manual that comes with Elan's version of troff followed by Unix Text Processing by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly, published by Hayden Books, ISBN 0-672-46291-5 -- Frank Kolakowski ===================================================================== |lfk@mbio.med.upenn.edu || Lee F. Kolakowski | |kolakowski@mscf.med.upenn. || Univ. of Penna. | |c/o jes@eniac.seas.upenn.edu || Dept of Chemistry | |kolakowski@c.chem.upenn.edu || 231 South 34th St. | |bcooperman.kolakowski@bionet-20.arpa || Phila, PA 19104 | |AT&T: 1-215-898-2927 ||--------------------------| |#include <litigate.h> || One-Liner Here! | =====================================================================
lee@anduk.co.uk (Liam R. Quin) (05/04/89)
In article <1109@wpg.UUCP> russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence) writes: >I've just started working with troff and would like to become more >adept at writing/changing macros. Could someone recommend a few good >books and articles? Thanks. Well... The manuals you get with modern versions of troff are sometimes well worth a look. The best version of troff I've come across for writing macros is SoftQuad's sqtroff. This has long macro names, and fairly good debugging support. You could also look at elan troff, which has good manuals, but which (unless you are an OEM) is more expensive. If you're stuck with whatever troff you've got... Here are a few books. Also, the changes I made to titroff (1986?) are still in the sources archives, and may give you better error messages. All of the books I have read on troff have errors in them, especially in the area of tabs and leaders (rows of dots ................ ). Dougherty, Dale & O'Reilly, Tim: UNIX Text Procesing Hayden Books, Indianapolis, 1987 0-672-46291-5, 665pp Probably the best of its kind. Well worth it! Barron & Rees: Text processing and typesetting with Unix Addison-Wesley, 1987 0-201-14219-9, 447pp I don't have this book. Emerson, Sandra & Paulsell, Karen: troff Typesetting for Unix Systems Prentice-Hall, 1987, 0-13-930959-4, 359pp Not as good as Hougherty & O'Reilly's book, although it does give some info about good old titroff. Gehani, Narain: Document Formatting and Typesetting on the Unix System Silicon Press, 1986 0-9615336-0-9 This really concentrates on using the -mm macros and the Documenter's Workbench. The version described is only availably internallyt within AT&T, however, so there are a few pitfalls. There were also a couple of papers in vol. 2A of the Unix manuals distributed with 7th Edition Unix, and included with other systems (BSD, Sun, Sequent...), but not System V [maybe you can buy the pages individually? :-)] Ossanna, Joseph F.: Nroff/Troff User's Manual Possibly the densest documentaion I've ever seen -- every comma counts! Kernighan, Brian W.: A Troff Tutorial Not many tutorials would say: [you can produce this...] by typing in only this: .sp \b'\(lt\(lk\(lb' \b'\(lc\(lf` x \b'\(rc\(rf' \b'\(rt\(rk\(rb' and get away with it! When you can understand this paper and the examples Osanna gives, most of the books on the market won't help very much... You will have to learn more by * reading the source * looking at the output of eqn (especially), tbl and pic * looking at things like chem * posting questions to comp.text :-) :-) We do macro-writing and courses, so I have some macro examples intended for teaching, but they mostly use sqtroff, with \*[long-names], so I don't have to deal with `programs' that look like bird-droppings, as one net-wit put it. I might be persuaded to mail/post some of these if you want. They do things like stacks, nested bullet-lists, balanced double columns, etc. Lee lee@anduk.co.uk -- Lee Russell Quin, Unixsys UK Ltd, The Genesis Centre, Birchwood, Warrington, ENGLAND, WA3 7BH; Tel. +44 925 828181, Fax +44 925 827834 lee%anduk.uucp@ai.toronto.edu; {utzoo,uunet}!utai!anduk!lee UK/Janet: uu.warwick.ac.uk!anduk!lee
wjc@ho5cad.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) (05/05/89)
In article <13@nx32s.anduk.co.uk> lee@anduk.co.uk (Liam R. Quin) writes: > In article <1109@wpg.UUCP> russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence) writes: > >I've just started working with troff and would like to become more > >adept at writing/changing macros. Could someone recommend a few good > >books and articles? Thanks. > Dougherty, Dale & O'Reilly, Tim: UNIX Text Procesing > Hayden Books, Indianapolis, 1987 0-672-46291-5, 665pp > Probably the best of its kind. Well worth it! > Emerson, Sandra & Paulsell, Karen: troff Typesetting for Unix Systems > Prentice-Hall, 1987, 0-13-930959-4, 359pp > Not as good as Hougherty & O'Reilly's book, although it does give some info > about good old titroff. These are both excellent books, but for different audiences. If you are just getting started with UNIX in general as well as with n/troff, go with Dougherty and O'Reilly. You'll learn less about n/troff, but more about other things you'll need (other standard UNIX tools) to be really productive. For example, there's a brief chapter on how to use "vi". On the other hand, if you've already been around UNIX for a while and just want to learn lots about n/troff, get Emerson and Paulsell. I also have a whole shelf of n/troff books (including both of these) and consider this to be the best I've seen. However, it is pretty complete (and therefore possibly scary if it's your first book on the subject). Your best bet is to look at both in a bookstore. You'll be able to tell within a couple minutes which one is more your speed. -- -- Bill Carpenter att!ho5cad!wjc or attmail!bill