Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!yetti!geac!david From: david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: why troff (actually why not) Message-ID: <513@geac.UUCP> Date: Mon, 2-Feb-87 09:38:43 EST Article-I.D.: geac.513 Posted: Mon Feb 2 09:38:43 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 2-Feb-87 18:44:27 EST References: <505@geac.UUCP> <112@tg.UUCP> Reply-To: david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) Organization: Geac Computers Intl. Toronto, CANADA Lines: 107 I normally would have replied via email, but this one rankles me just a tad, so what the hell... In article <112@tg.UUCP> scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: >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. Harder than you think laddie. > 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. What SoftQuad has is good vapurware. I have had an outstanding purchase order against their LN03 driver and ditroff stuff for over four months now. > 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! And guess what? SoftQuad is the sole distributor of DWB in Canada. Think they are going to sell me DWB without the LN03 driver which doesn't exist? > >>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. So your solution to everyone who wants ditroff is to write a driver for it? Why should I do this, when I can get the LN03 dvi driver for free? How do you cost-justify that? Can you say "business sense"? I knew you could! >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! AT&T Canada wouldn't know ditroff if it came up and bit them! AT&T Stateside will help me if they can show me a legally registered as owning DWB. I can't get DWB, if I did, the registration would be in Canada, and AT&T stateside would not help me. (For those who disbelieve - I recently wanted to attend a course on UNIX internals in San Fransisco. I spent four f**king days talking to AT&T Canada, AT&T stateside, the vendours of the course and various other people trying to get them all to agree that I owned a System V source license and could, therefore, attend the course. The entire problem focussed around the problem that AT&T stateside did not have a copy of my license registered in the states.) > >>Try to find anyone who knows Troff that well. >I am available! :-) > Oh really? Want a standard troff package that will blow your ditroff to hell? What to tell me how to fix it. It worked fine with the original Troff - core dumps now! > >>-david- > >Scott Barman >{philabs, pyrnj}!tg!scott Whew! I guess what really steamed me about this is a) it was *incredibly* condescending and b) Scott assumes that all the world in the United States. Now, some of you might like to believe that :-) but the rest of us have to live in the real world. For the record, I do not believe that the sun shines out of TeX's *ss, but I do not believe that troff (or ditroff) is a viable alternative. And, I think that, given time and the amount of development effort that is going into TeX, that the eventual winner of the race will be TeX. -david- (From the land of the frozen north) -- ========================================================================== David Haynes (utzoo!yetti!geac!david) Geac Computers International Inc. +1 416 475 0525 x 3420 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, CANADA, L3R 1B3