Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!sri-unix!hplabs!decwrl!pyramid!prls!philabs!tg!scott
From: scott@tg.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: why troff (actually why not)
Message-ID: <112@tg.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-Jan-87 03:46:32 EST
Article-I.D.: tg.112
Posted: Sat Jan 31 03:46:32 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Feb-87 15:39:17 EST
References: <505@geac.UUCP>
Reply-To: scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman)
Organization: Townsend Greenspan & Co., Inc.
Lines: 47
Keywords: Stop Reading Glossies!

In article <505@geac.UUCP> david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) writes:
>
>In a word, DRIVERS.
>
>I have been trying for over a year now to obtain a
>ditroff driver for our LN03 laser. Guess what?
>Nobody's got one! So I take a look at TeX -- an
>LN03 driver right on the distribution tape! WOW.
The machine I am now using (and have done some consulting work for) has
an LN03 and LN03-Plus and they use ditroff to output to it.  I don't think
you've looked too hard either.  Open "Unix/World" or "Unix Review" and
check out the ads for ditroff stuff since I think I've seen a couple
of folks advertise they have it!  I think SoftQuaid of Toronto, Canada
has it.  Besides, if you have WWB or DWB source,
drivers are not difficult to write, just use an existing one as a guide...
that's what I did!

>A number of people have been stating that troff
>comes with UNIX. This may be true (although some
>vendors charge extra for the stuff) but how many
>people have the equipment to use the standard
>drivers supplied with troff? How many people have
>not hit at lease one major troff stupidity?
I just finished a driver for a VideoComp 500 phototypesetter for two different
emulations and both programs compile well under 100K on a VAX.  The Imagen
driver (which I had to hack for the environment) handles both host resident
and printer resident fonts and is under 150K.  The font description files
for each in source and compiled form takes up negligable amounts of space.
The disk hogs are the Computer Modern raster files for the Imagen.
Also, how many people can find a TeX stupidity?  There are enough, just read
this news group.

>With TeX, I get full source, documentation, a driver
>for our laser, LaTeX, BibTeX, SliTeX and a host of
>public-domain software - for free! I can buy previewers
>for IBM and Macintosh devices and can even subscribe
>to a newletter to tell me more. If a real problem
>arises, I can even contact Richard Furuta or Donald Knuth.
And, if you buy DWB from AT&T you can call them, or querry this news group!

>Try to find anyone who knows Troff that well.
I am available! :-)

>-david-

Scott Barman
{philabs, pyrnj}!tg!scott