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From: N38AA401@NCSUVM.BITNET
Newsgroups: net.text,net.unix
Subject: Re:nroff/tex
Message-ID: <210@NCSUVM>
Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 21:48:36 EDT
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Posted: Thu Oct  2 21:48:36 1986
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I have used both TROFF on a vax running 4.2 with a XEROX 2700 and TEX on an
IBM-AT with an APPLE laserwriter. The TeX implementation is faster (uloaded vax

vs. AT), has nicer fonts (this may be the fault of the version of troff I had
that was hacked up for the Xerox printer), is better documented (if you can
read the TeXbook, which I could with effort), and runs on most computers known
to humanity. Troff and nroff only live on UNIX. I'd go with TeX. I used TROFF f
or
two years before finding the money for my own printer. If I'd known how much
better TeX is I'd have taken on a paper route to get my laserwriter sooner.

The only disadvantage is that things like tbl and pic are missing in TeX.
eqn is built in and far better in TeX. With effort you can run rings around
tbl but it takes real work or real help. pic is out of the question unless
you want to hack postscript. Good luck.