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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!alberta!sask!skatter!kuo
From: kuo@skatter.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Why troff?
Message-ID: <296@skatter.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Feb-87 18:41:53 EST
Article-I.D.: skatter.296
Posted: Sat Feb  7 18:41:53 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Feb-87 18:42:12 EST
References: <362@linus.UUCP> <106@tg.UUCP>, <1556@trwrb.UUCP> <7593@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: Accelerator Lab, Saskatoon, Sask.
Lines: 25
Keywords: TeX, troff
Summary: you can tell to be quite...

In article <7593@utzoo.UUCP>, henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
> 
> > -- Help facility
> > 	TeX is interactive.  It will stop and give you short online
> > help when it finds an error.  Troff just continues until it is done
> > and screws up your output.
> 
> The other side of this is people who can't stand TeX because it insists
> on being interactive, blithering at them given the slightest excuse.
> Whether one prefers this to troff's silence and relatively poor error
> diagnosis is very much a matter of taste.
> -- 

But (using the VMS version as an example) you can tell TeX to be quite and
just plow full speed ahead, error or no error, by using the /batch option.
In either case, TeX logs the error and some other info into a log file, which
is very useful for finding errors. Troff doesn't do that (does it?).

Another thing about troff is: when one needs 10 copies of the same formatted
output, one has to run troff 10 times (or unless you photocopy). But with TeX,
you just print the dvi file 10 times, not having to re-process the input file
again. Or am I wrong about this?


... Peter