Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!uflorida!mailrus!ncar!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: (Elan or Adobe)... ditroff vs otroff
Summary: go with ditroff
Message-ID: <13748@ico.ISC.COM>
Date: 19 Jan 89 01:41:15 GMT
References: <11759@grebyn.COM>
Distribution: na
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp, Boulder, CO
Lines: 18

In article <11759@grebyn.COM>, karl@grebyn.COM (Karl Nyberg) writes:
> ...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??...

Two serious differences:

   Font handling with old troff is a mess; it takes some playing to get
   alternate font families.  Ditroff gives you more choices to start with,
   plus a way to add the fonts you want.  Even if you just need some
   constant-width text from a fixed-pitch font, ditroff helps.

   Ditroff provides hooks for the newer preprocessors pic and grap; these
   aren't supported (as far as any implementations I know of) under old
   troff.
-- 
Dick Dunn      UUCP: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd           (303)449-2870
   ...A friend of the devil is a friend of mine.