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From: mcgraw@eneevax.UUCP (Timothy J. McGraw)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Why troff?
Message-ID: <588@eneevax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Jan-87 16:56:04 EST
Article-I.D.: eneevax.588
Posted: Thu Jan 22 16:56:04 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 22-Jan-87 22:35:52 EST
References: <362@linus.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcgraw@eneevax.UUCP (Timothy J. McGraw)
Distribution: comp.text
Organization: U of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
Lines: 38
Keywords: TeX, troff
Summary: TeX, troff, typesetting


In article <362@linus.UUCP> sdo@linus.UUCP (Sean David O'Neil) writes:
>
>Before we got TeX here troff was all we had for typesetting, and it was
>a nightmare.  I could never get it to do exactly what I wanted, especially
>when typing technical material

nroff/troff has served the mainframe publishing world well, especially at
such installations as large daily newspapers where you find little technical
text and need for output better than any laser printer can offer today.

>Now we have TeX and everything is dandy.

According to my friends in the commercial typsetting biz, at best TeX
is considered a technical novelty--in an unfamiliar programming 
"language"--invented by an academic for academicians. As you say:

>Practically everyone uses it here now, even people who never typed
>their own stuff before...

>My question is this - why does anyone continue to use troff?...Anyone who can
>use troff can learn to use TeX, so simplicity can't be the reason, and
>besides there are lots of really simple WYSIWYG formatters around today,
>so convenience seems unlikely as well.  Is it just inertia?
>Does anyone with an overview of both troff and TeX have an answer?  Due
>to my somewhat short experience with troff, I can easily imagine there are
>good reasons to use it - it's just that I'm unaware of any.

I admit my experience with both is probably just as limited, but I do
know phototypesetting, and the formatting commands in troff are 
more agreeable with people in strict typesetting situations who either
have no need for the technical typesetting features of TeX or don't care
for WYSIWYG anyway because of the sheer amount of text they are dealing with.

P.S. troff without EQN *is* a nightmare!
-- 
      Tim McGraw             Systems Research Center         U. of Maryland
mcgraw@sphinx.umd.edu     !seismo!sphinx.umd.edu!mcgraw      (301) 454-6167