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From: gore@nucsrl.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Why troff?
Message-ID: <3670006@nucsrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Jan-87 21:15:31 EST
Article-I.D.: nucsrl.3670006
Posted: Tue Jan 27 21:15:31 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Jan-87 18:37:40 EST
References: <362@linus.UUCP>
Organization: Northwestern Univ., Evanston IL
Lines: 42

> / simpson@trwrb.UUCP (Scott Simpson) /  1:48 pm  Jan 25, 1987 /
> Here is a (surely incomplete) comparison of both troff and TeX.

Here are some corrections (or "completions", if you wish).

> Troff advantages
> ----------------
> 
> -- Pic
> 	Troff can draw pictures.  TeX can't.
LaTeX can, and it's very easy to do.

> -- nroff
> 	Troff has an equivalent program to output to an ASCII device.
> TeX doesn't.  This is nice.  Unfortunately, besides the obvious things like 
> line breaks, troff and nroff output does not always come out the same.
There are previewers for TeX output, though none are distributed with TeX.

> -- Supports many output devices.
You must be talking about ditroff then.  In the case of both ditroff and TeX,
this depends on presence of driver software that converts ditroff or TeX
output into the language of the output device.

> TeX disadvantages
> -----------------
>
> -- Cannot draw pictures
> 	TeX is text-only.  This is somewhat alleviated with the \special
> command.  This command allows you to insert device driver specific
> calls into TeX's DVI output file.  [...]
LaTeX 'picture' environment makes drawing pictures easy.

It would be nice, though, to have an on-screen graphics editor that could
generate LaTeX or pic commands...

>		Scott Simpson
>		TRW Electronics and Defense Sector
>		...{decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!trwrb!simpson

Jacob Gore
Northwestern University, Computer Science Research Lab
{ihnp4,chinet}!nucsrl!gore