Re: [Groff] Groff editor.

[Clarke Echols]

When I was a technical writer and learning products engineer
at Hewlett-Packard, one of the big challenges was to get
writers to understand *structure* instead of *appearance*.
They would gut hung up, especially in HTML, over <i> instead
of <cite> or <b> instead of <strong>, not understanding the
difference between actual communication instead of presentation.

The limitation of groff/troff is that it is format oriented,
rather than structure oriented.  This means you're dealing with
.I, .IR, .BR, etc., but that is easily overcome by defining
new macros such as .startcite and .endcite or some such thing.

I don't have a clean answer to which is preferred.  I use groff
for writing and editing books for publication.  For web content,
I work directly in HTML using the vi/vim editor.  I like the
ability to do a 5s or c4w and change specific text instead of
dragging a mouse or deleting text then retyping.  Never having
to take my hands off of the home row is really nice.

By the way, any of you who do a LOT of typing, take a good look
at the Kinesis keyboards.  I've been using one now for close to
15 years and I LOVE IT!  It took a month to get used to, but it
solved all of my tendonitis problems due to unfriendly key layout,
and now I have a real problem trying to use conventional keyboards.
All keys are vertically up and down from each other (the only reason
they aren't on other keyboards is due to metal bars to operate the
hammers on very ancient manual typewriters), and there are six
keys in the center area that the thumbs can use instead of just
the space bar.  The left- and right-hand keys are clustered in
cup-shaped areas with about 6 inches (15 cm) between the two
clusters.  Info at http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/ .  Look under
[Products] and select keyboards.  Mine is the Professional QD,
similar to the current "Classic" model, and can be switched from
the QWERTY key layout to the Dvorak by pressing three keys
simultaneously.

I have no financial interest in the company.  I just happen to
*really* like the product.

Clarke

Nick Stoughton wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-08-20 at 14:11 -0400, Karee, Srinivas wrote:
> > Basically I cannot lose bold/italic/font and other stuff.
>
> The issue here for me is about the "meta-information". I have a 4,000
> page document that describes programming APIs. The fact that a function
> name is in italics with () after it is of much less importance to me
> than the fact that I'm talking about a function here, which is something
> that will appear in the index, etc etc. And when I describe a symbolic
> constant, it comes out in ALL CAPS and in Courier-Roman font, but as far
> as I'm concerned, I'm just describing a constant. I don't care what it
> looks like until the very last moment when it gets rendered for the
> reader.
>
> This is one of the things I hate about WYSIWYG editors ... it is all
> about the rendering, and not about the content.
>
> Both groff and docbook-XML give me this level of abstraction when I'm
> dealing with the source of a document. Word does not. 
>
> So, my real question, I guess, is do you care only about the
> bold/italic/font information, or do you care about the meaning (and
> possible other side effects, such as indexing)  behind the font?