[comp.text.tex] latex and troff

ascott@gara.une.oz.au (Tony Scott STPG) (09/06/90)

Iv'e been using latex now for quite some time and am gradually getting
to the stage of getting it to do what I want it to do. With various
macros and such obtained from the net and correspondants to my
questions I have been able to coerce latex to give me chemical
structure diagrams (using PiCTeX) that are automatically numbered in a similar
fashion to tables and figures, tables split across pages, bibliography
typeset the way chemists like, small cation printing for figures and a
bit more besides.

The only hassle is that although we have an enlarged version of TeX
here I still have problems putting in more than a few stuctures on a
page (well about 5 is the max).

I have a set of PIC macros that will draw chemical structure diagrams
quite easily and in  a more intuitive fashion than specifing xy
co-ordinates etc as with PICTeX. (It is no good telling me to use the
ChemTex macros as I tied them as soon as the article came outin the
journals and-- a) they require just  as much
effort to initially set them up, b) they still use a lot of TeX's
memory and c) when writing a thesis a great number of greatly
different structures are required needing a great number of structure
macros.)

The new version of groff that was just anounced on the net has the PIC
macros included and has a set of postscript drivers included.

My question to those who would have more experience than I is :

1. Is There a fundamental difference in the output from TeX or troff
as far as the quality of the typeset page originating from a postscipt
representation of the manuscript?

2. Does groff have a bibliographic referencing system similar to
BiBTeX that will automatically number references?

3. Does it have an automatic numbering system for tables, figures and
the like?

4. maybe there are other differences that may be pertinent?

I'll summarize the responses to this posting--it may be of interest to
others.