rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (02/21/90)
Here's the first piece of the results from the troff survey I posted three
weeks ago. There will be one or two more parts, depending on how I carve
up the details.
Quite conveniently, there were 102 responses, of which two contained only
selected comments, leaving just 100 actual tally-able responses. Please
realize that this survey was *not* controlled in any useful way. Therefore
it's wrong to attempt any serious or detailed statistics on the results;
however, I feel that some broad general conclusions are possible. In order
to allow easy interpretation (and discourage overanalysis of numbers:-) I'm
showing the results in a rough bar-graph form, with a ruler at the top to
show %age by 10s, thus:
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
mumble |***************
phumpher |********
This was for 37% mumble, 19% phumpher.
Further interpretation: If people have additional questions about the
results, I'll try to answer them *as long as* they don't require re-analy-
zing the data. That is, I can probably answer things like "Did you see x?"
but not "Is there a correlation between abc and xyz?"
Each of the questions is identified by its original number and a synopsis
of the question. I've rearranged a bit for convenience. After the graph
I've added some interpretation and shameless editorializing.
(1) percentage of work time spent writing/modifying documents:
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
0-10 |**********
11-25 |*************
26-50 |*************
>50 |****
I divided the results like this because the data suggested it. There's a
category of occasional work, up to 10%. Then there are folks who spend a
goodly chunk of time now and then. Next are the people who, from notes and
other comments, spend a lot of time on documentation although it's not
their only job. The last group is really "writers." The distribution
suggests that the cross-section of people who answered is a useful one.
(2) currently use troff?
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
not_at_all |****
a_little |*****
some |******
a_lot |************************
OK, we've got a lot of troff users...but we've also got a useful handful of
people who are using something else in-addition-to / instead-of troff. So,
what, for instance, do they use?...
(3) other formatter(s) used?
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
TeX |**************
uSoft_Word |******
Word_Perfect |****
FrameMaker |***
Interleaf |**
Ventura_Pub |**
Word_Star |**
Scribe |*
(Note that multiple answers were possible, and common. One that came up
reasonably often was TeX + some PC-based formatter.)
A couple of interesting observations here. First, TeX is the only serious
contender for this group of people. Second, consider that neither troff
nor TeX are wysiwyg. (More about that later on.) Scribe's rather poor
showing may have more to do with cost and marketing than technical merit;
some folks would use Scribe if they could afford (or even obtain) it.
There were various other formatters represented, in onesy-twosies.
(4) % of your documents use troff (IF other formatters used)?
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
<10 |********
10-49 |****
50-74 |****
>=75 |**********
This shows an interesting split. Of the people using other formatters,
some have essentially abandoned troff; some still use it heavily. The
"hole in the middle" suggests that people are either holding on to it or
getting rid of it, but having two or more formatters on relatively equal
terms may not be a happy situation.
(8) importance of troff?
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
none |**
existing |*****
some |****
most/all |***************************
Expanding the category explanations, they are "no importance", "for
existing docs only", "ongoing for some", and "ongoing for most/all". This
question is interesting as compared to the use of other formatters: Troff
is not being abandoned just because some other formatter is available.
(6) preprocessors used?
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
tbl |************************************
eqn |**************************
pic |**********************
grap |*********
refer |***
psfig |***
A few others were mentioned (bib, fig, some local ones) but down in the
noise. The 90% use of tbl is interesting. (It does suggest that people
who go mucking about with the preprocessors ought to think twice about
whether they've broken anything!) Overall in the survey, the preprocessors
tended to get good marks and are obviously considered an important part of
the whole package of documentation tools. There is some weighting based on
the fact that tbl and eqn have "always" been available (since the earliest
generally distributed versions of UNIX), but pic was introduced quite a bit
later and grap only relatively recently. Still, note that tbl stands out
even against eqn.
(7) macro packages used?
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
mm |*****************
me |**********
ms |********************
man |*****************************
mv |*
local |******************
Given the tendency to tinker with macro packages (among vendors as well as
individual sites), the above data suggest "Please don't break `man' when
you're messing around with it!" Other points: The number of "local" macro
packages is interesting. It is somewhat inflated by the fact that some
people consider major modifications to an existing package to be a new
local package--fair enough, as long as you don't count all of these as done
from scratch. Also, the preference for ms over mm is (to my thinking, such
as it is:-) strange. I suspect it is due to history and availability: mm
is not distributed with older systems, including BSD.
(9) trouble sources?
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
troff |************
macros |******************
preprocessors|********
I had asked for which one of the three areas was the major source of
trouble, if any. However, I tallied answers in which two or all three were
cited. Obviously, the macros stand out. I'll have more to say about troff
as a source of trouble in the next posting. For preprocessors, from
looking at other comments, pic is the biggest source of trouble. (Pic *is*
considered valuable; it just seems to be hard to use and frequently
counterintuitive. Some folks have tools to generate pic input.)
_ _ _ _ _
A note about wysiwyg (what you see is what you get): One of the issues I
was watching for was this: Is wysiwyg a big deal? How much do people want
it? To what extent are they leaving troff to go to wysiwyg formatters?
The answer, at least for the group of people who answered this, is "not
much". Wysiwyg is a big yawn, as far as I can tell. Quality of output,
programmability, flexibility, and control are more important.
I went looking for comments which mentioned wysiwyg explicitly or
implicitly-but-obviously. I counted 1/2 for an indirect reference and 1
for a direct ("I [don't] want it") reference. The final count surprises
me: It's about 6 units for wysiwyg and 9 against (out of 100). I wouldn't
interpret this as an anti-wysiwyg sentiment; it's more accurate (given the
statistical vagaries) to say that this group is as likely not to want it as
to want it.
However, many people mentioned previewers. That was the one question I
really missed asking. Even folks who explicitly want a non-wysiwyg,
markup-oriented edit-format split would like a previewer.
--
Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870
...Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.