Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#1

Post by melling » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 11:54 AM UTC

Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book
rkrishnan.org

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#2

Post by blue1 » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:12 PM UTC

It's sad that a complete structure writing/publishing workflow is still so hard. XSL-FO is awkward and limited, and will probably remain so. TeX is not design-friendly. On the other side, InDesign is mostly visual only. Framemaker seems to be only serious tool but it's very expensive.

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#3

Post by jernfrost » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:24 PM UTC

blue1 wrote: post #2

It's sad that a complete structure writing/publishing workflow is still so hard. XSL-FO is awkward and limited, and will probably remain so. TeX is not design-friendly. On the other side, InDesign is mostly visual only. Framemaker seems to be only serious tool but it's very expensive.

What about Apple Pages? I find that very good and easy to deal with typesetting. But I am no expert in the field so it might have sever weaknesses I am not aware of. Anyway I like that it seems to have been designed with layout in mind from the start unlike MS Word e.g. where doing layout has never felt natural.

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#4

Post by Finnucane » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:46 PM UTC

blue1 wrote: post #2

It's sad that a complete structure writing/publishing workflow is still so hard. XSL-FO is awkward and limited, and will probably remain so. TeX is not design-friendly. On the other side, InDesign is mostly visual only. Framemaker seems to be only serious tool but it's very expensive.

I was a devoted FrameMaker user until Adobe killed the Mac product. I used to have to do fairly complicated legal documents, and it was worth every penny. Plus, it was a very good word processor--you never had to leave the program to edit text. So I used it for everything I had to write.

A book like this could have been handled fairly easily in FrameMaker, but sadly Adobe has decided to position in it to be only for large enterprise shops running Windows. They're probably (rightfully) afraid it would cannabalize InDesign sales if they made it more accessible.

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#5

Post by baldfat » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

Sadly the tool used is not maintained currently

GNU troff is looking for a maintainer. If you’re interested, please take a look at this general information about GNU packages and being a GNU maintainer, and then email maintainers@gnu.org with a bit about your background and particular interest in this package. Thanks.

Please note that maintaining this package requires assigning copyright to the FSF, and ensuring that any future contributors also execute papers, since that is what past authors and contributors have done.

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#6

Post by girzel » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

Written in XML?! That's the first I've heard. Though also a fine proof that what you're writing is much more important than how you're writing it.

(Still, though -- XML?)

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#7

Post by oxplot » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

Recently I've been playing with Prince [1] and I've found it to be very powerful with excellent support for paged media. Given that HTML, CSS, Javascript, SVG is used to build the document, it's also familiar to most people already. There doesn't seem to be any open source competitor to Prince though.

[1]: http://www.princexml.com/

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#8

Post by girzel » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

blue1 wrote: post #2

It's sad that a complete structure writing/publishing workflow is still so hard. XSL-FO is awkward and limited, and will probably remain so. TeX is not design-friendly. On the other side, InDesign is mostly visual only. Framemaker seems to be only serious tool but it's very expensive.

I keep an eye on the Scribus project from time to time. Who knows, maybe someday it can compete.

https://www.scribus.net/

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#9

Post by coolsunglasses » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

oxplot wrote: post #7

Recently I've been playing with Prince [1] and I've found it to be very powerful with excellent support for paged media. Given that HTML, CSS, Javascript, SVG is used to build the document, it's also familiar to most people already. There doesn't seem to be any open source competitor to Prince though. [1]: http://www.princexml.com/

>There doesn't seem to be any open source competitor to Prince though.

This would be my issue with using it. This is partly why I stay with LaTeX for our book as I can convert it to other formats if I really need to. I find LaTeX gives me more control over presentation & type-setting than web-based stuff as well.

Re: Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book

#10

Post by insertnickname » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

girzel wrote: post #6

Written in XML?! That's the first I've heard. Though also a fine proof that what you're writing is much more important than how you're writing it. (Still, though -- XML?)

Why not XML? XML was made for documents, they were writing a document.