andrea@hp-sdd.UUCP (11/23/86)
>Why be so low tech and use troff? Troff is so non-state-of-the-art. >TeX is a much better choice for technical document preparation; it has >a lot more going for it. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to >use troff is because you can't get TeX for your machine (less and less >likely these days). Well, a bunch of very large documents (Computer Graphics Standards in various stages of preparation) are all done on troff because it is one of the most widely-available tools that does a good enough job for just about everything we need. I agree, it's not state-of-the-art, but when you're looking for something that is already available on a wide variety of computers, and is even reasonably standardized in its different incarnations, troff isn't bad. TeX produces wonderful looking output, but when you go looking for people who already have it, it just isn't as widespread. The agony of porting a 500-page document from troff to TeX just isn't worth it, especially when there's such a wealth of troff macros lying around to leverage off of! So when you're not just dashing off an occasional letter or resume, factors other than "highest tech" prevail. Andrea Frankel, Hewlett-Packard (San Diego Division) (619) 592-4664 "...like a song that's born to soar the sky..." ______________________________________________________________________________ UUCP : {hplabs|hp-pcd|hpfcla|hpda|noscvax|gould9|sdcsvax}!hp-sdd!andrea UUCP : {cbosgd|allegra|decvax|gatech|sun|tektronix}!hplabs!hp-sdd!andrea ARPA : hp-sdd!andrea@nosc.arpa CSNET : hp-sdd!andrea@hplabs.csnet USnail: 16399 W. Bernardo Drive, San Diego CA 92127-1899 USA
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (11/25/86)
>>Why be so low tech and use troff? Troff is so non-state-of-the-art. >>TeX is a much better choice for technical document preparation; it has >>a lot more going for it. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to >>use troff is because you can't get TeX for your machine (less and less >>likely these days). > >Well, a bunch of very large documents (Computer Graphics Standards in >various stages of preparation) are all done on troff because it is one >of the most widely-available tools that does a good enough job for just >about everything we need. I agree, it's not state-of-the-art, but when And troff/nroff will do things TeX can't do. See "On the power of traps and diversions in a document preparation language" by I.H.Whitten, M. Bonham, and E. Strong, Software Practice and Experience, 1982, 12, 1119-1131. We would like to be able to use troff and mix Mac pictures into the PostScript output. We don't have TeX, and we do have a fair investment in troff macros and related programmes. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt