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From: philip@axis.fr (Philip Peake)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: What does nroff stand for ?
Message-ID: <313@axis.fr>
Date: Mon, 26-Oct-87 11:52:59 EST
Article-I.D.: axis.313
Posted: Mon Oct 26 11:52:59 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Oct-87 01:38:46 EST
References: <180@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Axis Digital, Paris
Lines: 29
Summary: New ROFF

In article <180@aiva.ed.ac.uk>, ken@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Ken Johnson) writes:
> > From: davy@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Dave Curry)
> > 
> > I've always wondered what the "n" [in nroff] was
> > for though ("non-typesetter"?).
> 
> Probably "not".

Wrong. The history (like most other things about UNIX) was is explained
in at least one version of the manuals (probably pre-AT&T).

Once upon a time, there was a text formatting program running on DEC
system 10's called Run-off. This was re-written to make text processing
available on the early UNIX systems. It was called 'roff'.
Roff was nice, in that it was FAST. However, it didn't have macros.
So an new version was written New ROFF of nroff for short.
Later this was hacked to run a typesetter (Typesetter ROFF), and
hence troff.

You may have noticed that as [nt]roff and its macro packages have
increased in complexity they have become SLOW, this is why you find
(well, sometimes) a thing called sroff (Simple ROFF), deliverd with
system 5's. This seems to be basically roff, with a little bit of
macro handling.

So, once again, if you have any questions on unix commands,
remember the age old phrase 'RTFM'.

Philip