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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Why troff?
Message-ID: <2570@phri.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Jan-87 10:54:39 EST
Article-I.D.: phri.2570
Posted: Fri Jan 23 10:54:39 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Jan-87 13:36:26 EST
References: <362@linus.UUCP>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Distribution: comp.text
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 34
Keywords: TeX, troff

In article <362@linus.UUCP> sdo@linus.UUCP (Sean David O'Neil) writes:
> My question is this - why does anyone continue to use troff?

	The simple answer is inertia, history, and portability.  Some form
of nroff or troff has come with every version of Unix I've ever heard of
(has AT&T unbundled it yet?)  so you can be pretty sure that a troff
document will be portable to another other Unix system (modulo the problem
that the target system might not have the right macro package).  While TeX
documents may be more portable in theory, and while TeX is growing in
popularity and is becomming available on more and more systems, it still
has nowhere near the universality that troff does in the Unix community.
Of course, for porting to a non-Unix system, TeX has the advantage (or
Scribe, I guess).

	Also, people have a lot invested in troff and aren't going to give
that up quickly.  While learning TeX may pay off in the long run (and I am
learning it, slowly), I have years of learning invested in troff.  When I
want to get a document done by a deadline, I'm going to pick troff because
that's what I know better.  Maybe by next year I'll have changed my mind,
but not yet.  Also, I've got lots of troff files laying around to rip off.
It is rare that I write a major document without stealing text from some
earlier document -- the last version of some documentation, my blurb for
this year's annual report, a grant application, a research paper, whatever.

	From a purely theoretical standpoint, you can preview troff on an
ASCII CRT or on a line printer.  You can't do that with TeX.  I do a lot of
writing at home where I don't have a bit-map screen or a laser printer to
proof drafts with.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

"you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"