A 120-Page Novella Takes 1.6 Seconds to Typeset With Linux’s Manual-Page Tool
A writer shares the tiny groff setup behind a book-length PDF, including a demo archive readers can try.
The program that lays out Linux manual pages can also make a novella look like a book. Apparently it was waiting for someone to give it a less argumentative plot.
In a first-person walkthrough, movq describes a custom groff macro package with three basic formatting commands. A chapter heading, a normal paragraph, and a paragraph with extra spacing cover the essentials of this particular manuscript.
The reported 1.6-second run includes preprocessing. It is one author’s measurement on one old PC, with no controlled comparison to a modern word processor. That is plenty interesting without awarding it an imaginary benchmark trophy.
The author calls the package “tiny,” but the post also walks through page numbers, headers, traps, and hyphenation. Small input does not make typography stop having opinions.
The next experiment is pleasantly concrete: put a chapter of your own text through the setup and see which layout assumptions survive contact with it.