Re: Request to reconsider removal of groff from base system

[Gerard Lally <lists+netbsd.users%netmail.ie@localhost>]

At date and time Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:18:36 +0200, tlaronde wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 12:24:51PM +0100, Gerard Lally wrote:
> >
> > As someone who uses groff as a lightweight alternative to TeX and
> > friends**
>
> FWIW, I have developed a minimal TeX system: kerTeX
> (http://www.kergis.com/kertex.html) (french; english at
> http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html).
>
> A minimal install can be as small as 8MB. The default (with the AMS
> fonts, e-TeX, dvips, MetaPost, bibtex and the Adobe standard PostScript
> fonts metrics) is less than 40MB.
>
> The advantage of the TeX system is that it is self-sufficient : it
> includes fonts and the mean to design them.

Thank you for this reminder Thierry. I took note of your work a long
time ago and will certainly keep it in mind should I abandon groff, but
for now I have invested some time in learning groff.

To Greg and Eric:

thank you for your replies.

I suppose the long and the short of it is that a powerful typesetting
system - groff - is already there, in base. It's not really about the
space used, but rather that a minimal NetBSD setup comes pre-loaded with
industrial-strength document layout and typesetting software. To my mind
that is quite amazing, and it speaks volumes about both NetBSD and groff.
NetBSD packs a lot of punch into the base system and I feel it would be
sad to sacrifice that power for what seems to me little or no gain.

--
Gerard Lally