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From: mackay@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Pierre MacKay)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Laser fonts
Message-ID: <8811162108.AA00188@brillig.umd.edu>
Date: 7 Nov 88 07:47:04 GMT
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I had hoped that this stupid error of mine would already have
been buried, but as it is not, I confess it as a stupid error.

There may even be an argument for a ditroff-->dvi converter,
but there would still be a double level of round-off errors,
because ditroff does apparently use a more limited field for
spacing values than dvi (note, please, I say apparently)

Please do not think that this was "negative campaigning"
in favor of TeX.  It wasn't.  There are several functions
for which troff is the better option--notably any document which
must be optimized for the full range of target printers.
TeX does not do this.  It optimizes for a printer in never-never
land, and the results on a line-printer are not good at all.
The troff/nroff pair does things like Unix man pages (which
are not always simple formatting) better than TeX ever could,
because a TeX file cannot be made to format itself on an
ANSI X3.64 terminal or on a simple printer.  

Apologies to all, and especially to Brian Kernighan.

Nuff said??

Pierre MacKay