Eqn vs LaTeX

Take the LaTeX code:

-1 \cdot \frac{1}{n}}\cup \{-1, \frac{1}{n}\}

Do you know what this means?

• difficult parse visually.
• uses lots of hard-to-type symbols.

Not only that, TeX by itself takes up 338.8 MB!

Eqn

-1 cdot 1 over n union left { -1 , 1 over n right }

How’s that for readability!

This is eqn: a math preprocessor on the layout engine groff. By the same metric, groff takes up 8 MB.

And it works I promise!

Even if the math is nonsensical, isn’t it pretty!

Links

You might already have groff/eqn on your machine! If not, take a look here.

This repo is my template for a simple eqn/groff project. Here’s what the pdf looks like.

Lastly, there is documentation for a groff macro system, and an in-depth guide for eqn!