README

rgu honours docs
================

Distributed Mesh Sensor Network using Raspberry Pi's
----------------------------------------------------

This acts as a sister repository for the code for my honours project which
 can be found at [rgu-honours](github.com/decantr/rgu-honours).


Build
-----
To compile the groff document, the following one liner can be used.
```
	$ refer -p referbib -PS -e report.ms | groff -ms -kept -T ps | ps2pdfwr - report-img.pdf
```

An understanding of the pipe is key to knowing how this command works,
 essentially `refer` and `groff -ms` are both stream editors that edit
 the plaintext `report.ms`.
This is then passed to `ps2pdf` which converts the .ps file (in the pipe) to
 a pdf on the disk.

To attach the ethics form use;
```
	$ pdfunite report-img.pdf parts/ethics.pdf final-report.pdf
```


Groff?
------
I have been asked a number of times why I chose groff as the language to
 compose my dissertation in.
Originally I intended to use LaTeX, and did so for my literature review,
 however it becomes painfully clear to anyone who has used LaTeX that compile
 time for mid to large documents are atrocious.
Further the need to recompile documents to add in references was the breaking
 point for me.

I had experimented using groff during a previous submission and was astonished
 at the speed and simplicity of it.
For example compiling this document less than a second (without images),
 which meant near WYSIWYG level editing.
```
	$ time refer -p referbib -PS -e report.ms | groff -ms -keptU -T pdf > report-img.pdf

  real    0m0.898s
  user    0m1.154s
  sys     0m0.065s
```