rs@cci632.UUCP (Enrico Silterra) (09/29/86)
What experience have people had with nroff/tex?
What are the pro's and con's of these two systems?
Is one more portable than the other?
Rick Silterra
Usenet: {allegra,ihnp4 }!cmcl2!rochester!cci632!ccird2!rs
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Any opinions expressed above are my own,and not those of Computer Consoles,Inc.N38AA401@NCSUVM.BITNET (10/03/86)
I have used both TROFF on a vax running 4.2 with a XEROX 2700 and TEX on an IBM-AT with an APPLE laserwriter. The TeX implementation is faster (uloaded vax vs. AT), has nicer fonts (this may be the fault of the version of troff I had that was hacked up for the Xerox printer), is better documented (if you can read the TeXbook, which I could with effort), and runs on most computers known to humanity. Troff and nroff only live on UNIX. I'd go with TeX. I used TROFF f or two years before finding the money for my own printer. If I'd known how much better TeX is I'd have taken on a paper route to get my laserwriter sooner. The only disadvantage is that things like tbl and pic are missing in TeX. eqn is built in and far better in TeX. With effort you can run rings around tbl but it takes real work or real help. pic is out of the question unless you want to hack postscript. Good luck.
whp@cbnap.UUCP (W. H. Pollock x4575 3S235) (10/07/86)
In article <210@NCSUVM> N38AA401@NCSUVM.BITNET writes: >... If I'd known how much >better TeX is I'd have taken on a paper route to get my laserwriter sooner. > >The only disadvantage is that things like tbl and pic are missing in TeX. >eqn is built in and far better in TeX. Tbl is really a separate program from nroff. It was written after nroff was in use awhile to satisfy the need for column-type data (tables). Pic was written for the same reason. Instead of writing tbl for TeX, you could use a spreadsheet program to generate your tables, and simple include the outputed table in your TeX file. If you have a MacPaint type of program, or your spreadsheet program does charts (bar, pie, etc.), you can just include these also. Don't worry. Someday someone will write a tbl for TeX (and we'll all have to put up with tbl's syntax for another few centuries :-) Wayne H. Pollock, UUCP: ...{ihnp4,cbatt}!cbnap!whp DELPHI: WHP GEnie: W.POLLOCK "The opinions expressed above are ficticious. Any resemblance to the opinions of persons living or dead is purely coincidental."
gore@nucsrl.UUCP (Jacob Gore) (10/08/86)
>/ nucsrl:net.text / N38AA401@NCSUVM.BITNET / 8:48 pm Oct 2, 1986 / >The only disadvantage is that things like tbl and pic are missing in TeX. >eqn is built in and far better in TeX. With effort you can run rings around >tbl but it takes real work or real help. pic is out of the question unless >you want to hack postscript. Good luck. What you are referring to is the default TeX (Plain TeX). There is a (precompiled) macro package, LaTeX, which has something like 'pic' and 'tbl' "built in," as you put it. Jacob Gore Northwestern Univ Comp Sci Research Lab ihnp4!nucsrl!gore
dunn@caip.RUTGERS.EDU (Stanley Dunn) (10/09/86)
Find the LaTeX macros and reference manual by Leslie Lamport. The array, tabular, and tabbing environments have done everything I need since switching from troff/tbl/eqn to LaTeX.
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (10/10/86)
> [TeX] ... runs on most computers known > to humanity. Troff and nroff only live on UNIX... Which also runs on most computers known to humanity! -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (10/14/86)
At the risk of getting into a UNIX-vs-the-rest flame, or a TeX-vs-troff flame, I must respond to Henry Spencer's remark that while TeX runs on most computers known to humanity, troff runs on UNIX, which runs on most computers known to humanity. True enough, but computing centre managements which don't run UNIX generally aren't enthusiastic about switching to a mainframe UNIX port just so some of their users can do troff. I speak from experience: I've been using a 4.2 BSD system for proofing documents which finally live on an Amdahl 5860 running MTS. I only have to change a few lines regarding fonts at the beginning of the file, and from then on everything is exactly the same. I have no intention of trying to convince the computing centre management to switch to UTS, VM/UX, or any other such port just so I can do the same with troff.
langdon@lll-lcc.UUCP (Bruce Langdon) (10/16/86)
In article <438@ubc-cs.UUCP>, manis@ubc-cs.UUCP writes: > while TeX runs on > most computers known to humanity, troff runs on UNIX, which runs on most > computers known to humanity. True enough, but computing centre managements > which don't run UNIX generally aren't enthusiastic about switching to a > mainframe UNIX port just so some of their users can do troff. > ...and even if yours would, there are good reasons to use TeX on UNIX. A Berkeley prof and I wrote a book typeset with troff/eqn for McGraw-Hill. Now I need parts of this --but in TeX. Here at LLL, Lila Chase and I wrote a set of filters using sed and lex that convert an in-house text+math typesetter sources (nearly) to TeX. Does anything like that exist to convert troff/eqn sources (nearly) to TeX? For that matter, does anyone have ANY info or filters to convert Wang, Multimate files to ASCII files that can be given to TeX with a little hand editting? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Langdon L-472 langdon@lll-lcc.ARPA Physics Department "langdon#bruce%d@lll-mfe.ARPA" Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore, CA 94550 (415) 422-5444 UUCP: ..{ihnp4,qantel,ucdavis,pyramid,styx}!lll-lcc!langdon ..{gymble,seismo}!lll-crg!lll-lcc!langdon
gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (10/16/86)
It's not noticeably harder to port troff to a non-UNIX OS than it is to port TEX. However, one does need a DWB license for troff.