Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!elan!kg
From: kg@elan.UUCP (Ken Greer)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Elan DWB II or Adobe Transcript for Sun?
Message-ID: <408@elan.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 89 18:36:14 GMT
References: <11759@grebyn.COM>
Distribution: na
Organization: Elan Computer Group, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 30

From article <11759@grebyn.COM>, by karl@grebyn.COM (Karl Nyberg):

> I tend to favor the Elan package (complete DWB, ditroff and previewer),
> except I don't know anyone who is currently using it.  The Elan folks tried
> to make a big deal out of how much better ditroff was than otroff, but
> seriously, how often has the regular troff crashed on you??

Otroff rarely core dumps, but it is super buggy.  But that's not
the biggest issue.  The biggest deal is that otroff has the C/A/T
conception of fonts:
	1. You can have 4 fonts at a time with otroff
	   You can have 50 fonts at a time with Eroff

	2. Font spacing is awful (yuk, pooh!) with otroff.
	   Font spacing is beautiful (aka professional) with Eroff

	3. Eroff's troff has kerning.
	   Otroff doesn't.

	4. Eroff has a number of commands that make life simpler
	   than otroff's.  For example, I/O redirection:

			.tm something > file
			.tm something >> file

	   A nice enhancement Elan has added.  Better than the old
	   way of redirecting stderr.

Ken Greer
elan!kg