| 1 | .sp |
| 2 | .SH |
| 3 | III. DOCUMENT PREPARATION |
| 4 | .PP |
| 5 | .UC UNIX |
| 6 | systems are used extensively for document preparation. |
| 7 | There are two major |
| 8 | formatting |
| 9 | programs, |
| 10 | that is, |
| 11 | programs that produce a text with |
| 12 | justified right margins, automatic page numbering and titling, |
| 13 | automatic hyphenation, |
| 14 | and the like. |
| 15 | .UL nroff |
| 16 | is designed to produce output on terminals and |
| 17 | line-printers. |
| 18 | .UL troff |
| 19 | (pronounced ``tee-roff'') |
| 20 | instead drives a phototypesetter, |
| 21 | which produces very high quality output |
| 22 | on photographic paper. |
| 23 | This paper was formatted with |
| 24 | .UL troff . |
| 25 | .SH |
| 26 | Formatting Packages |
| 27 | .PP |
| 28 | The basic idea of |
| 29 | .UL nroff |
| 30 | and |
| 31 | .UL troff |
| 32 | is that the text to be formatted contains within it |
| 33 | ``formatting commands'' that indicate in detail |
| 34 | how the formatted text is to look. |
| 35 | For example, there might be commands that specify how long |
| 36 | lines are, whether to use single or double spacing, |
| 37 | and what running titles to use on each page. |
| 38 | .PP |
| 39 | Because |
| 40 | .UL nroff |
| 41 | and |
| 42 | .UL troff |
| 43 | are relatively hard to learn to use effectively, |
| 44 | several |
| 45 | ``packages'' of canned formatting requests are available |
| 46 | to let you specify |
| 47 | paragraphs, running titles, footnotes, multi-column output, |
| 48 | and so on, with little effort |
| 49 | and without having to learn |
| 50 | .UL nroff |
| 51 | and |
| 52 | .UL troff . |
| 53 | These packages take a modest effort to learn, |
| 54 | but the rewards for using them are so great |
| 55 | that it is time well spent. |
| 56 | .PP |
| 57 | In this section, |
| 58 | we will provide a hasty look at the ``manuscript'' |
| 59 | package known as |
| 60 | .UL \-ms . |
| 61 | Formatting requests typically consist of a period and two upper-case letters, |
| 62 | such as |
| 63 | .UL .TL , |
| 64 | which is used to introduce a title, |
| 65 | or |
| 66 | .UL .PP |
| 67 | to begin a new paragraph. |
| 68 | .PP |
| 69 | A document is typed so it looks something like this: |
| 70 | .P1 |
| 71 | \&.TL |
| 72 | title of document |
| 73 | \&.AU |
| 74 | author name |
| 75 | \&.SH |
| 76 | section heading |
| 77 | \&.PP |
| 78 | paragraph ... |
| 79 | \&.PP |
| 80 | another paragraph ... |
| 81 | \&.SH |
| 82 | another section heading |
| 83 | \&.PP |
| 84 | etc. |
| 85 | .P2 |
| 86 | The lines that begin with a period are the formatting requests. |
| 87 | For example, |
| 88 | .UL .PP |
| 89 | calls for starting a new paragraph. |
| 90 | The precise meaning of |
| 91 | .UL .PP |
| 92 | depends on what output device is being used |
| 93 | (typesetter or terminal, for instance), |
| 94 | and on what publication the document will appear in. |
| 95 | For example, |
| 96 | .UL \-ms |
| 97 | normally assumes that a paragraph is preceded by a space |
| 98 | (one line in |
| 99 | .UL nroff , |
| 100 | \(12 line in |
| 101 | .UL troff ), |
| 102 | and the first word is indented. |
| 103 | These rules can be changed if you like, |
| 104 | but they are changed by changing the interpretation |
| 105 | of |
| 106 | .UL .PP , |
| 107 | not by re-typing the document. |
| 108 | .PP |
| 109 | To actually produce a document in standard format |
| 110 | using |
| 111 | .UL \-ms , |
| 112 | use the command |
| 113 | .P1 |
| 114 | troff -ms files ... |
| 115 | .P2 |
| 116 | for the typesetter, and |
| 117 | .P1 |
| 118 | nroff -ms files ... |
| 119 | .P2 |
| 120 | for a terminal. |
| 121 | The |
| 122 | .UL \-ms |
| 123 | argument tells |
| 124 | .UL troff |
| 125 | and |
| 126 | .UL nroff |
| 127 | to use the manuscript package of formatting requests. |
| 128 | .PP |
| 129 | There are several similar packages; |
| 130 | check with a local expert to determine which ones |
| 131 | are in common use on your machine. |
| 132 | .SH |
| 133 | Supporting Tools |
| 134 | .PP |
| 135 | In addition to the basic formatters, |
| 136 | there is |
| 137 | a host of supporting programs |
| 138 | that help with document preparation. |
| 139 | The list in the next few paragraphs |
| 140 | is far from complete, |
| 141 | so browse through the manual |
| 142 | and check with people around you for other possibilities. |
| 143 | .PP |
| 144 | .UL eqn |
| 145 | and |
| 146 | .UL neqn |
| 147 | let you integrate mathematics |
| 148 | into the text of a document, |
| 149 | in an easy-to-learn language that closely resembles the way |
| 150 | you would speak it aloud. |
| 151 | For example, the |
| 152 | .UL eqn |
| 153 | input |
| 154 | .P1 |
| 155 | sum from i=0 to n x sub i ~=~ pi over 2 |
| 156 | .P2 |
| 157 | produces the output |
| 158 | .EQ |
| 159 | sum from i=0 to n x sub i ~=~ pi over 2 |
| 160 | .EN |
| 161 | .PP |
| 162 | The program |
| 163 | .UL tbl |
| 164 | provides an analogous service for preparing tabular material; |
| 165 | it does all the computations necessary to align complicated columns |
| 166 | with elements of varying widths. |
| 167 | .PP |
| 168 | .UL refer |
| 169 | prepares bibliographic citations from a data base, |
| 170 | in whatever style is defined by the formatting package. |
| 171 | It looks after all the details of numbering references in sequence, |
| 172 | filling in page and volume numbers, |
| 173 | getting the author's initials and the journal name right, |
| 174 | and so on. |
| 175 | .PP |
| 176 | .UL spell |
| 177 | and |
| 178 | .UL typo |
| 179 | detect possible spelling mistakes in a document. |
| 180 | .UL spell |
| 181 | works by comparing the words in your document |
| 182 | to a dictionary, |
| 183 | printing those that are not in the dictionary. |
| 184 | It knows enough about English spelling to detect plurals and the like, |
| 185 | so it does a very good job. |
| 186 | .UL typo |
| 187 | looks for words which are ``unusual'', |
| 188 | and prints those. |
| 189 | Spelling mistakes tend to be more unusual, |
| 190 | and thus show up early when the most unusual words |
| 191 | are printed first. |
| 192 | .PP |
| 193 | .UL grep |
| 194 | looks through a set of files for lines |
| 195 | that contain a particular text pattern |
| 196 | (rather like the editor's context search does, |
| 197 | but on a bunch of files). |
| 198 | For example, |
| 199 | .P1 |
| 200 | grep \(fming$\(fm chap* |
| 201 | .P2 |
| 202 | will find all lines that end with |
| 203 | the letters |
| 204 | .UL ing |
| 205 | in the files |
| 206 | .UL chap* . |
| 207 | (It is almost always a good practice to put single quotes around |
| 208 | the pattern you're searching for, |
| 209 | in case it contains characters like |
| 210 | .UL * |
| 211 | or |
| 212 | .UL $ |
| 213 | that have a special meaning to the shell.) |
| 214 | .UL grep |
| 215 | is often useful for finding out in which of a set of files |
| 216 | the misspelled words detected by |
| 217 | .UL spell |
| 218 | are actually located. |
| 219 | .PP |
| 220 | .UL diff |
| 221 | prints a list of the differences between |
| 222 | two files, |
| 223 | so you can compare |
| 224 | two versions of something automatically |
| 225 | (which certainly beats proofreading by hand). |
| 226 | .PP |
| 227 | .UL wc |
| 228 | counts the words, lines and characters in a set of files. |
| 229 | .UL tr |
| 230 | translates characters into other characters; |
| 231 | for example it will convert upper to lower case and vice versa. |
| 232 | This translates upper into lower: |
| 233 | .P1 |
| 234 | tr A-Z a-z <input >output |
| 235 | .P2 |
| 236 | .PP |
| 237 | .UL sort |
| 238 | sorts files in a variety of ways; |
| 239 | .UL cref |
| 240 | makes cross-references; |
| 241 | .UL ptx |
| 242 | makes a permuted index |
| 243 | (keyword-in-context listing). |
| 244 | .UL sed |
| 245 | provides many of the editing facilities |
| 246 | of |
| 247 | .UL ed , |
| 248 | but can apply them to arbitrarily long inputs. |
| 249 | .UL awk |
| 250 | provides the ability to do both pattern matching and numeric computations, |
| 251 | and to conveniently process fields within lines. |
| 252 | These programs are for more advanced users, |
| 253 | and they are not limited to document preparation. |
| 254 | Put them on your list of things to learn about. |
| 255 | .PP |
| 256 | Most of these programs are either independently documented |
| 257 | (like |
| 258 | .UL eqn |
| 259 | and |
| 260 | .UL tbl ), |
| 261 | or are sufficiently simple that the description in |
| 262 | the |
| 263 | .ul 2 |
| 264 | .UC UNIX |
| 265 | Programmer's Manual |
| 266 | is adequate explanation. |
| 267 | .SH |
| 268 | Hints for Preparing Documents |
| 269 | .PP |
| 270 | Most documents go through several versions (always more than you expected) before they |
| 271 | are finally finished. |
| 272 | Accordingly, you should do whatever possible to make |
| 273 | the job of changing them easy. |
| 274 | .PP |
| 275 | First, when you do the purely mechanical operations of typing, |
| 276 | type so that subsequent editing will be easy. |
| 277 | Start each sentence on a new line. |
| 278 | Make lines short, |
| 279 | and break lines at natural places, |
| 280 | such as after commas and semicolons, |
| 281 | rather than randomly. |
| 282 | Since most people change documents by rewriting phrases |
| 283 | and adding, deleting and rearranging sentences, |
| 284 | these precautions simplify any editing |
| 285 | you have to do later. |
| 286 | .PP |
| 287 | Keep the individual files of a document down |
| 288 | to modest size, |
| 289 | perhaps ten to fifteen thousand characters. |
| 290 | Larger files edit more slowly, |
| 291 | and of course if you make a dumb mistake |
| 292 | it's better to have clobbered a small file than a big one. |
| 293 | Split into files at natural boundaries in the document, |
| 294 | for the same reasons that you start each sentence |
| 295 | on a new line. |
| 296 | .PP |
| 297 | The second aspect of making change easy |
| 298 | is to not commit yourself to formatting details too early. |
| 299 | One of the advantages of formatting packages like |
| 300 | .UL \-ms |
| 301 | is that they permit you to delay decisions |
| 302 | to the last possible moment. |
| 303 | Indeed, |
| 304 | until a document is printed, |
| 305 | it is not even decided whether it will be typeset |
| 306 | or put on a line printer. |
| 307 | .PP |
| 308 | As a rule of thumb, for all but the most trivial jobs, |
| 309 | you should type a document in terms of a set of requests |
| 310 | like |
| 311 | .UL .PP , |
| 312 | and then define them appropriately, |
| 313 | either by using one of the canned packages |
| 314 | (the better way) |
| 315 | or by defining your own |
| 316 | .UL nroff |
| 317 | and |
| 318 | .UL troff |
| 319 | commands. |
| 320 | As long as you have entered the text in some systematic way, |
| 321 | it can always be cleaned up and re-formatted |
| 322 | by a judicious combination of |
| 323 | editing commands and request definitions. |