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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!cs.tamu.edu!skdutta
From: skdutta@cs.tamu.edu (Saumen K Dutta)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.text.tex
Subject: troff or tex which one to adopt?
Message-ID: <4326@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 24 Feb 90 20:19:22 GMT
Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU
Reply-To: skdutta@cs.tamu.edu (Saumen K Dutta)
Followup-To: comp.text
Organization: Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University
Lines: 41

Maybe this is a redundant question to ask but

I am quite concerned about the environment which I should use for my
future text processing work. Till now I have been working with the
text formatter "troff".Now I would like to explore the possibilities
of switching over to LaTek. I am quite comfortable with the unix
text formatter as it provides lots of fexibility though I have not
gone beyond writng few lines of troff macros.
	The feature I liked most in working with this environment is that
nroff allows me to develop the text on the character terminals and verify
them (ofcourse to some extent) with a dot matrix printer without going
through iteration with Laser Printer. It also gives me the flexibility
to define the printer sequence and using any printer for output(Even
the diasy wheel printers {with character wheels} can be used to test
mathematcal characters.) The tbl, eqn, neqn preprocessors really makes
things simpler. Maybe one can use deroff for quick reading of text and
feeding it to the spelling checker. One problem I faced with it(maybe
due to my ignorance) is the difficulty to create even simplest figures
(like circle,ellipse etc.) unless you patch some postscript command at
appropriate places before passing it to the printer. I heard that
this can be done directly using Tex.
	Please advise me the pros and cons of switching over to 
other formatter with regard to
a) Facilities to be available in Future
b) Simplicity in programming
c)Flexibility ( i am concerned about the difficulty to be encountered
	in getting a device driver for dot matrix or daisy wheel printer
	for LaTex)
d)Any minus points of one compared to other.

Thank you for your time

Please send your replies through e-mail only. If you wish I will compile
them and post separately.

Thanks again for any anticipated pointer.
	
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