Re: [dev] Suckless word processing solution?

[2009-09-22 18:39] Илья Илембитов <ilembitov_AT_yandex.ru>
>
> I am looking for a lightweight solution to create rich formatted content in any
> MS Word-editable format

> Heirloom project might be nice (at least, it is said to support UTF-8 and
> modern fonts), but again it is unclear as to which documentation should I use.

I started using heirloom troff now and I am quite happy with it. It
*does* support UTF-8 and modern fonts.

Heirloom doctools do ship an updated troff manual which is a good
reference. The central place for documentation is [0].

[0] http://troff.org

But you are right when you miss easy user-level documenation, this
is rare in fact. However, I haven't had much problem becoming familiar
with troff and friends (supported by my Latex knowledge).

> Besides, the project wasn't updated since April 2008.

Is that a problem? IMO this isn't long ago for software which is
matured.

I read in another mail that you need the Word-editable output for
proof-readers or someone similar. Is there plain-text sufficient?
Because then you could simply generate output with nroff. (I suppose
Word can deal with plain-text files.)

If not -- if the output have to contain formatations, images, etc --
then you will not become happy with troff, I'm afraid. But I don't
know about about troff2whatever converters.

btw: You say, it's for scientific papers ... I wonder: don't they use
Latex for them? It's so common in this field of action.

meillo