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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: troff (was Re: MAC with HP Laserjet ???)
Message-ID: <2015@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Nov-86 19:05:29 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.2015
Posted: Mon Nov 24 19:05:29 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Nov-86 23:44:47 EST
References: <3166b415.2a75@apollo.uucp> <242@elan.UUCP> <398@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <611@hp-sdd.HP.COM>
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 25
Xref: dciem comp.sys.mac:183 comp.sys.hp:17
Summary: 


>>Why be so low tech and use troff?  Troff is so non-state-of-the-art.
>>TeX is a much better choice for technical document preparation; it has
>>a lot more going for it.  As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to
>>use troff is because you can't get TeX for your machine (less and less
>>likely these days).
>
>Well, a bunch of very large documents (Computer Graphics Standards in
>various stages of preparation) are all done on troff because it is one
>of the most widely-available tools that does a good enough job for just
>about everything we need.  I agree, it's not state-of-the-art, but when

And troff/nroff will do things TeX can't do.  See "On the power of
traps and diversions in a document preparation language" by I.H.Whitten,
M. Bonham, and E. Strong, Software Practice and Experience, 1982, 12,
1119-1131.

We would like to be able to use troff and mix Mac pictures into the
PostScript output.  We don't have TeX, and we do have a fair investment
in troff macros and related programmes.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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