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From: root@hobbes.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Some ditroff deficiencies, could they exist in TeX?
Message-ID: <108@hobbes.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Feb-87 19:10:46 EST
Article-I.D.: hobbes.108
Posted: Tue Feb  3 19:10:46 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Feb-87 07:20:08 EST
References: <117@tg.UUCP>
Reply-To: plocher@hobbes.UUCP (John Plocher)
Organization: Hispanic Seminary of Midieval Studies, Ltd
Lines: 38
Keywords: phototypesetters, publishing

+---  In article <117@tg.UUCP> scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes:
| My only other question has to do with usage of troff or TeX.  Is there
| anyone in netland using TeX or troff in publishing--either comercial
| book/magazine publishing or the publishing of journals for non-profit
| organizations?  I have said in the past that the Americal Physical
| Society publishes 45,000+ pages per year in many journals using the old
| C/A/T troff (being phased out) and ditroff.  So if you know of any
| others, I would like to know!
+---

  The HSMS here in Madison, WI, USA is a non-profit publishing 
concern which publishes about 10,000 pages a year in the field
of (suprise) old Spanish literature.  We have been using many
different systems, the strangest being text entry with WordStar
on CP/M micros, mechanical translation to a commercial markup
language (with minor human intervention), and shipment to a 
3d party publisher for typesetting.  Uuuuugh!  We now use
an IBM AT with TeX driving an Apple LaserWriter which produces
camera ready copy. (Concordences, dictionaries... don't need more
than 300 dpi resolution :-)  We are producing a large (~ 2M words)
dictionary of the Old Spanish Language which will use TeX as
it's markup style.
  We also have a Prof in the dept who publishes about 1000 pages
per year, exclusively with troff and a laserwriter.

After dealing with both, I find myself drawn to troff simply
because the 'source' file contains a higher text to formatter command
ratio.  ie, the TeX source files seem to have much more stuff
like \whatever\this\means{to TeX Hackers} than the similar
.troff "command" macro stuff.  I may (might,am?) wrong, though.

No flames, please.  Look at this month's Dr. Dobbs, the article
about favorite editors: "Like ducklings that adopt the first moving
object they see as mother, programmers often adopt the first editor
they learn as the model of what an editor is and should be."
I know I still am trying to forget ed command sequences!

John