Groff I: Whence and Wherefore

tilde.town/~dozens/gemlog/18.gmi

i'm starting a blog series on groff! i kind of fell in love with groff in 2023, and i want to tell you all about it!

🎲 dozens

Jan 12 · 4 months ago · 👍 skyjake, lykso, zinricky, norayr, BBSman, Yretek, corscada, skf

9 Comments ↓

🐙 norayr · Jan 12 at 21:14:

thank you so much, i was always interested, please continue and publish here links too!

>It is fun. I personally find a great deal of satisfaction in using old, weird software in new and surprising ways.

yes, me too!

🎲 dozens [OP] · Jan 12 at 21:52:

haha, i laughed :D

🚀 mbays · Jan 13 at 00:13:

I'll follow this.

🖥️ zetamacs · Jan 13 at 00:34:

Hey, great article! I'm all for *roff awareness. :D

There was one edit I wanted to suggest:

>This eventually became `roff`, and then `troff` for UNIX, which was used to format man pages.

That is *almost* accurate. If I have my software history right, troff ("typesetter" roff) was written primarily for preparing documents for the CAT phototypesetter at Bell Labs; in fact, that was the only kind of physical device for which it could format output at first. It was nroff ("newer" roff) that was used for terminal text like man pages.

Eventually that was no longer true, and it was confusing even at the time.

🦉 ResetReboot · Jan 13 at 12:55:

I still use it from time to time, having used LaTeX too, *roff typesetting feels lighter, but needs more remembering the commands for the program. LaTeX on the other hand, feels more powerful, but it is heavier.

🐙 norayr · Jan 13 at 20:31:

i found out about

— groff studio

a couple of days ago from #fpc (freepascal) chat on libera irc network.

the developer was saying it didn't build with latest newly released lazarus and that he 'fixed' something, not sure where.

so not sure you can build it right now, i hesitated to post this link in my other commett because i am not sure the project builds, but let it be here, it may be found later by someone interested in roff, when the project will be in better shape.

🎲 dozens [OP] · Jan 13 at 21:24:

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

🐙 norayr · Jan 16 at 01:12:

btw i tried to build that project on linux and it built. the layout was not tested on litux so some things were under other things.

but anyway, it is not for me, i don't know how it makes groff more convenient than writing in any preferred editor and compiling with groff. (:

🎲 dozens [OP] · Jan 16 at 03:59:

Sweet! Thanks for sharing. The macos binary didn't work for me, so I wasn't able to check it out myself. Sounds like a cool project if not more useful than an editor and a pdf viewer.