[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-13 9:41 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> ...
> i have no idea of what happened on the TeX side in the last, say,
> about 15 years.  TeXLive has always been too large for me, i have

They have a small "basic" version with the essentials, a hundred 
megabytes or so.

http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html

> the KerTeX basics laying around since a few years, just in case
> i ever find time to come back to TeX.)  This can be a problem for
> quick use cases that do not allow proper reviews and fine-tuning,
> the latter sometimes down to the paragraph level, dependent on the
> material.  In TeX this can be tuned more easily with conservative
> values and looking out for "overfull boxes" (iirc), if such occur
> at all, then.
>
> My finding is that, with groff, i can produce papers (mostly
> letters) of almost identical beauty with some fine-tuning, with
> almost the identical number of "markup" (which is now also easily
> typed with the american keyboard).  And the fine-tuning i like,
> because i adore the calligraphic as an art, as an act of devotion
> of the calligrapher, to some higher spirit or the being as such,
> and spending some seconds in some text is my simple Boche
> equivalence to those fine spirits.

Indeed, as a typographer, I believe details matter, no matter what the 
audience. I think Knuth feels the same way. :)

--Toby


>
> --steffen
>