sdo@linus.UUCP (Sean David O'Neil) (01/20/87)
Before we got TeX here troff was all we had for typesetting, and it was a nightmare. I could never get it to do exactly what I wanted, especially when typing technical material, and the documentation was poorly done. Now we have TeX and everything is dandy. Practically everyone uses it here now, even people who never typed their own stuff before, which is just short of amazing. Not only that but the output really looks great. My question is this - why does anyone continue to use troff? This is a serious question here, I'm being neither smug nor snide. From the number of articles about troff posted in this newsgroup there clearly exists a large number of people who use troff and support it. Anyone who can use troff can learn to use TeX, so simplicity can't be the reason, and besides there are lots of really simple WYSIWYG formatters around today, so convenience seems unlikely as well. Is it just inertia? Does anyone with an overview of both troff and TeX have an answer? Due to my somewhat short experience with troff, I can easily imagine there are good reasons to use it - it's just that I'm unaware of any. Sean O'Neil
faustus@ucbcad.berkeley.edu (Wayne A. Christopher) (01/21/87)
The one thing I've heard that troff is better than TeX with is tables -- I've used tbl a lot and it seems to work fine, but others who have used TeX's table-making facilities complain that they are not very convenient. (Are there any good macro packages for tables in TeX?) Other than that, it's just inertia... Also, what sort of self-respecting UNIX hack would use a text formatter written in Pascal? :-) Wayne
dan@prairie.UUCP (Daniel M. Frank) (01/22/87)
In article <1244@ucbcad.berkeley.edu> faustus@ucbcad.berkeley.edu (Wayne A. Christopher) writes: >(Are there any good macro packages for tables in TeX?) LaTeX does tables quite nicely. It is pretty much a macro package for TeX. -- Dan Frank uucp: ... uwvax!prairie!dan arpa: dan%caseus@spool.wisc.edu
apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) (01/22/87)
There's a deeper reason I'm considering staying with troff: ASCII output compatibility. Nroff provides a handy ASCII-printer and screen previewer for my documents (even tables), and you can't write UN*X man(1) pages with TeX (because the output isn't readable with more(1)). When I want BOTH ASCII output and typeset-quality output from one input document, TeX doesn't provide the answer. You may have noticed that I am trying to find the answer in TeX, but my search has been fruitless so far. Also, a note for the person asking about tables: LaTeX makes tables LOTS easier. /----------------------------------------------\ | Opinions expressed above do not necessarily | -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. | reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. | ...lll-lcc!atari!apratt \----------------------------------------------/
mcgraw@eneevax.UUCP (Timothy J. McGraw) (01/23/87)
In article <362@linus.UUCP> sdo@linus.UUCP (Sean David O'Neil) writes: > >Before we got TeX here troff was all we had for typesetting, and it was >a nightmare. I could never get it to do exactly what I wanted, especially >when typing technical material nroff/troff has served the mainframe publishing world well, especially at such installations as large daily newspapers where you find little technical text and need for output better than any laser printer can offer today. >Now we have TeX and everything is dandy. According to my friends in the commercial typsetting biz, at best TeX is considered a technical novelty--in an unfamiliar programming "language"--invented by an academic for academicians. As you say: >Practically everyone uses it here now, even people who never typed >their own stuff before... >My question is this - why does anyone continue to use troff?...Anyone who can >use troff can learn to use TeX, so simplicity can't be the reason, and >besides there are lots of really simple WYSIWYG formatters around today, >so convenience seems unlikely as well. Is it just inertia? >Does anyone with an overview of both troff and TeX have an answer? Due >to my somewhat short experience with troff, I can easily imagine there are >good reasons to use it - it's just that I'm unaware of any. I admit my experience with both is probably just as limited, but I do know phototypesetting, and the formatting commands in troff are more agreeable with people in strict typesetting situations who either have no need for the technical typesetting features of TeX or don't care for WYSIWYG anyway because of the sheer amount of text they are dealing with. P.S. troff without EQN *is* a nightmare! -- Tim McGraw Systems Research Center U. of Maryland mcgraw@sphinx.umd.edu !seismo!sphinx.umd.edu!mcgraw (301) 454-6167
roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (01/23/87)
In article <362@linus.UUCP> sdo@linus.UUCP (Sean David O'Neil) writes: > My question is this - why does anyone continue to use troff? The simple answer is inertia, history, and portability. Some form of nroff or troff has come with every version of Unix I've ever heard of (has AT&T unbundled it yet?) so you can be pretty sure that a troff document will be portable to another other Unix system (modulo the problem that the target system might not have the right macro package). While TeX documents may be more portable in theory, and while TeX is growing in popularity and is becomming available on more and more systems, it still has nowhere near the universality that troff does in the Unix community. Of course, for porting to a non-Unix system, TeX has the advantage (or Scribe, I guess). Also, people have a lot invested in troff and aren't going to give that up quickly. While learning TeX may pay off in the long run (and I am learning it, slowly), I have years of learning invested in troff. When I want to get a document done by a deadline, I'm going to pick troff because that's what I know better. Maybe by next year I'll have changed my mind, but not yet. Also, I've got lots of troff files laying around to rip off. It is rare that I write a major document without stealing text from some earlier document -- the last version of some documentation, my blurb for this year's annual report, a grant application, a research paper, whatever. From a purely theoretical standpoint, you can preview troff on an ASCII CRT or on a line printer. You can't do that with TeX. I do a lot of writing at home where I don't have a bit-map screen or a laser printer to proof drafts with. -- Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 "you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"
ken@rochester.ARPA (SKY) (01/23/87)
|The one thing I've heard that troff is better than TeX with is tables -- |I've used tbl a lot and it seems to work fine, but others who have used |TeX's table-making facilities complain that they are not very convenient. |(Are there any good macro packages for tables in TeX?) Other than that, |it's just inertia... Also, what sort of self-respecting UNIX hack would |use a text formatter written in Pascal? :-) | | Wayne The table mode of LaTeX is as good as tbl. Now that TeX has stabilized you will see implementations in other languages, like Common TeX in C. Notwithstanding its Pascal implementation, I typically find TeX processes my text faster than troff. On the other hand, some documents need troff, like Unix man pages. And there is nothing like pic in the TeX world yet. Ken
terry@nrcvax.UUCP (01/23/87)
sdo@linus.UUCP (Sean David O'Neil) says: >My question is this - why does anyone continue to use troff? This is a >serious question here, I'm being neither smug nor snide. From the number >of articles about troff posted in this newsgroup there clearly exists a >large number of people who use troff and support it. Anyone who can >use troff can learn to use TeX, so simplicity can't be the reason, and >besides there are lots of really simple WYSIWYG formatters around today, >so convenience seems unlikely as well. Is it just inertia? I love troff. I tell it exactly what to do, and it does it. I like the complete control and flexibility it gives me. I can get it to do anything I want it to do, and as I use it more I am constantly learning more about it. My past experience with word processing software has predominantly been with such things as WordStar and WordPerfect. I used to think WordPerfect was absolutely wonderful, but the more I use troff, the less I like WordPerfect. I'm not familiar with TeX so I can't judge between the two. I don't know about inertia. If you are perfectly satisfied with what you have where is the impetus to change? -- _______________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- without a Terry Grevstad ECNALG Network Research Corporation ihnp4!nrcvax!terry {sdcsvax,hplabs}!sdcrdcf!psivax!nrcvax!terry _______________________________________________________________________ -----------------------------------------------------------------------
ken@rochester.ARPA (SKY) (01/23/87)
|nroff/troff has served the mainframe publishing world well, especially at |such installations as large daily newspapers where you find little technical |text and need for output better than any laser printer can offer today. |I admit my experience with both is probably just as limited, but I do |know phototypesetting, and the formatting commands in troff are |more agreeable with people in strict typesetting situations who either |have no need for the technical typesetting features of TeX or don't care |for WYSIWYG anyway because of the sheer amount of text they are dealing with. Gee, aren't these also the people with typesetters fed by paper tape? :-) I suspect the needs of newspapers are different from jornals (wider variety of material). But it may interest you that a couple of people from TV Guide attended the last TUG meeting. Both troff and TeX are capable of driving high resolution typesetters. Several ACM journals are willing to take TeX input. Also DECUS proceedings. TeX or LaTeX may not seem to have as many knobs as troff, but they are there, just well hidden from casual users. Personally I'm tired of fiddling with indents and similar minutiae and would rather concentrate on content. Ken
ken@rochester.ARPA (SKY) (01/24/87)
In article <537@atari.UUCP> apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) writes: |There's a deeper reason I'm considering staying with troff: ASCII |output compatibility. Nroff provides a handy ASCII-printer and screen |previewer for my documents (even tables), and you can't write UN*X |man(1) pages with TeX (because the output isn't readable with more(1)). |When I want BOTH ASCII output and typeset-quality output from one |input document, TeX doesn't provide the answer. I recently posted a postprocessor called DVIDOC that provides near-printer output for TeX. Basically, it tells TeX that every font it is using is a pseudo, fixed width font called doc. It is far from equivalent to nroff because I am not TeXpert to figure out how to improve it, but it may be a good starting point. For Internet users, the files are dvidoc.shar[12] in public/latex-style on cayuga.cs.rochester.edu (a.k.a. rochester.arpa, a.k.a. 192.53.5.209). Non-Internet users, subscribe to TeXHax to get details of how to retrieve by mail. Ken PS: It works for 4.[23] BSD. Other OSes will need some work.
scott@tg.UUCP (01/24/87)
Just some insights on (di)troff: I work for the American Physical Society (this is a graciously borrowed id, for which I am thankful) and we publish the 45,000+ journal pages typesetting them with troff/ditroff and supporting preprocessors tbl and eqn. Now let me say these versions are severely hacked to cure some "ills" with these programs. However, with the problems found (including the 4-font restriction of the original C/A/T troff), troff seems to be the best way to publish the high volume of journals as quickly as we do with few problems. Ditroff provides flexibility in the area of output support where we have to produce output for a VideoComp 500 phototypesetter and an Imagen laser printer (for proof reading). Ditroff allows us, with some minor hacking in table sizes, to support up to 20 named fonts and others that we "mount" as we need them. We also have the availibilty of using the many very well written preprocessors like tbl, which is very important in displaying tables of information. Another advantage to ditroff is the ASCII output file it produces. This output allows for the output destined for one device to be previewed on a Tektronix 4014 display as well as allowing some editing of this file to convince a driver for the Imagen that this is output destined for it (this is necessary to check page/line breaks). This ASCII output is also a very good, quick aid to try to determine what ditroff is doing without printing each piece of output (which can get expensive). I'll admit the biggest disadvantage of ditroff vs. TeX is TeX's ability to typeset mathematics. While I do not think that eqn was designed for the type of work we force on it, with some hacking (the only program that has undergone a near rewrite), we have it produceing three-page physics proofs on a regular basis. Without the extensive hacks to eqn, we would not be able to do this job as well as we do. In conjunction with eqn and ditroff problems, there are many problems with accents/diacritics. Since I do not know how TeX handles these, I can only say that we have new routines and other additions to eqn grammar to add things like bars, hats, dots, accute and grave accents, cedillas, and (before ditroff) creating an angstrom from an A and a degree-symbol. I think that the American Mathematical Society uses TeX to produce its journals, maybe someone from that group could give us insight on TeX and publishing. THE biggest disadvantage of TeX vs. ditroff I can see is the requirement of TeX to use its own generated fonts (metafont). We have looked into the possibility of using TeX, but have resisted up until now because the Computer Modern fonts of TeX does not compare with the Times Roman availble on the VideoComp. We cannot download fonts to this typesetter nor is it fiscally feesable to have Information International Inc. (the makers of the VideoComp) digitize these fonts for us. For APS, this is a big factor! This is just one perspective, not necessarily correct! I would be interested in hearing about the uses of TeX on very high volume of output also requiring the quality necessary for publishing. I am leaving APS for "greener pastures" but would be willing to pass on any information that might help in the TeX decisions (I am being retained as a consultant--neat arrangement ;-)). Scott Barman philabs!tg!scott
gore@nucsrl.UUCP (01/25/87)
/ ken@rochester.ARPA (SKY) / 10:12 am Jan 23, 1987 /
> And there is nothing like pic in the TeX world yet.
What about the "picture" environment in LaTeX? I've used it to make very nice
diagrams. I wish there was an interactive graphics editor that could generate
the necessary commands...
Jacob Gore
Northwestern University, Computer Science Research Lab
{ihnp4,chinet}!nucsrl!goreroy@phri.UUCP (01/25/87)
In article <765@nrcvax.UUCP> terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad) writes: > I love troff. You, sir, are a sick person! :-) > I don't know about inertia. If you are perfectly satisfied with what > you have where is the impetus to change? As I said in a previous article, I use troff in preference to TeX. This is not to say that I like troff better than TeX (although "troff" is easier to type). In fact, I hate troff. More than that, I hate "bib | tbl | eqn | troff", which I do every day. It must be even worse if you have to do "bib | pic | ideal | grap | tbl | eqn | JRandomPreprocessor | troff". Why do I hate troff and friends so much (I suppose you could say "any friend of troff's is no friend of mine")? Not because it's slow, or because the output isn't as nice as what TeX produces, but simply because to get anything fancy done, you have to deal with 4 separate programs (and 2 sets of macros (bib and troff)), all of which interract with each other in strange ways. Have you ever seen what happens when you leave a $ out of an equation inside a table? Even worse, try leaving an unmatched \fI in a bib data base. And don't tell me to use checkeq and checknr to find the errors; I can show you lots of things that pass unscathed through those and yet cause troff to have a fit. When I was on my way out the door Friday afternoon, somebody came to me with a tbl problem -- he has a table which works fine when he runs if off by itself, but when he prints it along with the rest of his manuscript, he gets pages of ".if 683 < 683" lines printed out. I've seen that happen before, and I've fixed it numerous times, but I still don't know what causes it. The worst part is that it'll still be there when I get into the office tommorow morning; one more reason to hate Mondays. Don't get me wrong. I think troff is a wonderful piece of software. It's 15 years old and still going strong. It's been bent and twisted and stretched into doing things it was never really designed to do and it somehow manages to keep going. It's just that more is being demanded of it than it has to give and it's time to move on to something else. Unfortunately, I havn't yet found that something else. I think TeX is it, but I'm not yet sure. As much as I hate troff, I have so much invested in it (and so do the people I work with) that whatever replaces it has to be a lot better than troff to justify the cost of learning something new. -- Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 "you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"
simpson@trwrb.UUCP (01/25/87)
I have read with interest the discussion of troff vs. TeX. Many of the
postings have been by people who have only used one of the formatting
languages. As someone who has extensively used both troff (and its
preprocessors) and TeX, I have decided to throw my two cents in.
Here is a (surely incomplete) comparison of both troff and TeX.
Troff disadvantages
-------------------
-- Two character command names.
Remember BASIC? Two character command names are not mnemonic
and are hard to remember. In addition, with two letters it is easy to
come up with names for two different macros that clash.
-- Macros are often bizarre collection of symbols.
Troff macros use a lot of non-alphabetic words and symbols.
To the uninitiated, it looks like a bunch of line noise. TeX is not
much better, but in TeX at least you have readable words.
-- Troff programs have bugs.
I don't know if troff itself has any bugs, but the preprocessors
eqn and tbl surely do. TeX is (probably) bug free. In fact, Donald Knuth
offers you money if you find any bugs in TeX. I think the sum is around
$20 now for any bugs found. Usually the amount offered is a power of 2.
Interestingly enough, since TeX has been out, only two bugs have been found.
It was extensively tested with the trip test.
Troff advantages
----------------
-- tbl
Troff does tables easily with tbl. TeX can do them with much more
difficulty. LaTeX makes tables much easier to do in TeX. If you use LaTeX
then I think they are about equivalent in ease although there are purists
on both sides.
-- Pic
Troff can draw pictures. TeX can't.
-- nroff
Troff has an equivalent program to output to an ASCII device.
TeX doesn't. This is nice. Unfortunately, besides the obvious things like
line breaks, troff and nroff output does not always come out the same.
-- Comes with UNIX
You buy UNIX, you get troff. Consequently, many people have troff
and learn it first. TeX must be installed and many sites don't go through
the hassle.
-- Supports many output devices.
TeX disadvantages
-----------------
-- Complex
In addition to being a good computer scientist, Donald Knuth is
also a good mathematician. Consequently, TeX has a number of complex
algorithms and rules that the beginner may find hard to understand.
Usually doing simple text is easy for the beginner. But when he wants
to modify output routines and such, TeX becomes complex.
-- Cannot draw pictures
TeX is text-only. This is somewhat alleviated with the \special
command. This command allows you to insert device driver specific
calls into TeX's DVI output file. The driver can then read these
commands when it is processing the DVI file and interpret them. Usually
the driver will read in a graphics file and output it to the printer at
this point. I have seen some really nice graphics output merged with TeX
documents. The complexity of the graph depends on the graphics package,
the driver and the output device; pic can only draw with its command set.
The commands are driver specific.
-- Cannot output to an ASCII device.
This is also somewhat alleviated by the programs dvitty and dvidoc
which were recently posted to the net. With dvidoc you must run your
document through TeX again before you output it to get the spacing right.
With dvitty you don't; however, the lines come out the wrong length
since the line breaks are already chosen. Also, with dvitty, you may lose
characters once in a while.
TeX advantages
--------------
-- Can create your own fonts
You can do this in troff too but not nearly as easily. TeX's
companion program METAFONT is very powerful and difficult to use.
It creates bitmaps from algebraic descriptions of character glyphs.
METAFONT works with outlines so it can create a font at any resolution.
-- Highly portable
TeX is written in WEB (Pascal) and runs on virtually everything.
Troff runs on UNIX.
-- Great math facilities
Since Knuth is a mathematician, he did the math part of TeX well.
The math looks fantastic and is easy to use. Eqn is also easy to use
but the math does not look that great and is not as powerful as TeX.
-- Help facility
TeX is interactive. It will stop and give you short online
help when it finds an error. Troff just continues until it is done
and screws up your output.
-- Well documented
TeX is well documented. The TeXbook, The METAFONTbook, LaTeX:
A Document Preparation System, The Joy of TeX and TeX for Scientific
Documentation are just some of the books. The TeXbook is an adventure
in cross-referencing other pages but all the information is there if you
need it. Troff is documented but not nearly as well.
-- Long command names
TeX command names can be as long as you want. Long mnemonic
names greatly ease remembering commands. TeX is also free format; troff
commands must begin at the start of a line. Long names are a major win.
-- Supports many output devices
-- Good attention to detail
One of the reasons that TeX is hard to use is that it is so exacting.
TeX pays close attention to ligatures, kerning, widows, clubs, etc. For
example, TeX will move the characters A and V closer together when they
are typeset adjacently. Troff won't.
In summary, TeX seems to be better for high quality typesetting
since it is newer and pays more attention to detail. You can do
anything in TeX if you try hard enough. It was created not to typeset
just books, but books of the finest quality. People still continue to
use troff because it comes with UNIX, the man pages are in troff, you
can preview it on a terminal and they don't have or don't want to learn
TeX. Here at TRW, virtually all of our users have switched over to TeX
after they saw the superior output. Our site is not alone. Many other
sites within TRW have experienced the same phenomenon.
There is one other typesetting language that I haven't mentioned:
Scribe. Scribe seems to be TeX-like (or TeX seems to be Scribe-like since
Scribe existed first). The company that sells Scribe, Unilogic, charges
about $30,000 for the product plus a yearly fee. Consequently, many
sites have dropped it and adopted the free (and superior) TeX.
We dropped it about two years ago and I know the University of Southern
California is dropping it at the end of the month. Both Scribe and TeX
were written by Stanford professors.
UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.
TeX is a trademark of the American Mathematical Society.
--
Scott Simpson
TRW Electronics and Defense Sector
...{decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!trwrb!simpsonchris@mimsy.UUCP (01/25/87)
>sdo@linus.UUCP (Sean David O'Neil) says: >>Anyone who can use troff can learn to use TeX, so simplicity can't >>be the reason, and besides there are lots of really simple WYSIWYG >>formatters around today, so convenience seems unlikely as well. >>Is it just inertia? There are some real reasons to stick with troff, though they often translate to some form of inertia. There are a large number of things that work with troff that are not widely implemented for TeX---pic and grap come to mind; there is a tpic for TeX but no equivalent to grap--- and there is a large software base built around troff that would take much time and effort to modify to use TeX. That time and effort has little or no payoff to those using the existing software. (To those *maintaining* it, on the other hand. . . . `Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to anger.') In article <765@nrcvax.UUCP> terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad) writes: >I don't know about inertia. If you are perfectly satisfied with what >you have where is the impetus to change? Exactly. Inertia, but this can be called neither good nor bad. >I love troff. I tell it exactly what to do, and it does it. I like >the complete control and flexibility it gives me. ... Both TeX and troff contain true programming languages, and one can do virtually anything in either. Personally, I find it easier to instruct TeX as to what I want. I have used both, neither terribly extensively, and worked first with troff. In spite of the well known (but is it real?) tendency for programmers to prefer their first languages, I switched as soon as I discovered TeX, as I have never liked two-letter name spaces. (My first programming language was a two-letter dialect of BASIC, which I outgrew. I moved *up* to FORTRAN. Functions and six letter local variables! What ecstasy! :-) ) -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7690) UUCP: seismo!mimsy!chris ARPA/CSNet: chris@mimsy.umd.edu
steve@umnd-cs.UUCP (01/25/87)
In article <106@tg.UUCP>, scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: > Another advantage to ditroff is the ASCII output file it produces. This > output allows for the output destined for one device to be previewed on > a Tektronix 4014 display... TeX previewers also exist... > THE biggest disadvantage of TeX vs. ditroff I can see is the requirement > of TeX to use its own generated fonts (metafont). We have looked into > the possibility of using TeX, but have resisted up until now because the > Computer Modern fonts of TeX does not compare with the Times Roman > availble on the VideoComp. We cannot download fonts to this typesetter > nor is it fiscally feesable to have Information International Inc. (the > makers of the VideoComp) digitize these fonts for us. For APS, this is > a big factor! TeX doesn't have to use it's own fonts. Your problems are with the programs that convert dvi format files to files your output devices can understand. We use the Apple Laserwriter's built-in fonts regularly in our TeX files. Arbortext (previously Textset) provides a dvi->ps program that works just great with this, and I doubt that the changes to the public domain version are that great either. All TeX needs are new .tfm files, simply the .tfm files provided by Adobe remapped in the order TeX wants its characters. Steve. -- Spoken: Steven M. Miller UUCP: umnd-cs!steve CSNET: steve%umn-duluth.csnet ARPA: steve%umnd-cs-gw.ARPA@umn-rei-uc.ARPA USNail: Computer Science Dept, University of Minnesota at Duluth 10 University Drive, Duluth, MN 55812
pjg@tahoe.UUCP (01/26/87)
In article <362@linus.UUCP> sdo@linus.UUCP (Sean David O'Neil) writes: >From the number >of articles about troff posted in this newsgroup there clearly exists a >large number of people who use troff and support it. Notice how many are questions about how to do something. (Stop. I know what you're going to say.) >Is it just inertia? To be brief, *almost* yes. >Does anyone with an overview of both troff and TeX have an answer? >There must be good reasons to use it - it's just that I'm unaware of any. me too. ;-) As someone who has an overview of both TeX, troff and some traditional phototypesetting I'd like to stick in my two cents worth. troff is dominant in the UNIX world because it comes with the package (where the package is something other than the systems we see coming unbundled from folks like Tandy and AT&T). Since it is a standard product at so many sites that are producing documents, another reason is (although I'm inclined to hook it on to the first) these documents come in some flavor of troff. And it is true that TeX does have some difficulty producing output on limited resolution devices (i.e. non-graphic crt terminals). This is more important to some people than others though. Further expansion on this theme is available via mail. As well as hossannahs of praise for TeX/LaTeX/AMSTeX. <<Short, smug, snide snit about some other comments on this thread>> Now it is *not* my considered opinion that troff will let any mere mortal perform any task better than TeX. (Brian Reid has indicated that troff is ultimately more powerful than TeX (or Scribe) but I doubt very much that anyone of us has noticed this.) It is also not my opinion that the typical users of a phototypesetter will find troff any easier to use than TeX. And I doubt that very many of them that would consider TeX an academic oddity would consider troff any the less one. (These people think in a fundamentally different way is what I really believe). I think there you have it. Some marginal, but real reasons. Seems rather analogous to most Pascal usage to me. Hmmm, personally I think I'd rather have to sleep with a bear than support a community of troff users. -- Thanks for your time. Paul Graham seismo!unrvax!pjg
zwicky@osu-eddie.UUCP (01/26/87)
In article <106@tg.UUCP> scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: > >THE biggest disadvantage of TeX vs. ditroff I can see is the requirement >of TeX to use its own generated fonts (metafont). We have looked into >the possibility of using TeX, but have resisted up until now because the >Computer Modern fonts of TeX does not compare with the Times Roman >availble on the VideoComp. We cannot download fonts to this typesetter >nor is it fiscally feesable to have Information International Inc. (the >makers of the VideoComp) digitize these fonts for us. For APS, this is >a big factor! TeX can use any font for which it has font metrics; I personally generate LaTeX documents for the internal LaserWriter Plus fonts on a Sun3. I hate Computer Modern, so I do everything in Bookman. It seems that most of the problems people have with TeX can be traced to either not knowing enough about TeX, or not wanting to change. One of our faculty members didn't want to switch from troff to TeX because "TeX wouldn't do macros" We managed to convince hima of the falsehood of this, but he still believes that TeX commands are harder to understand than troff, an attitude I find almost as incomprehensible as troff. TeX isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than many people seem to think. Elizabeth
rusty@weyl.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (01/27/87)
One of the TeX advantages that you forgot is font compatibility. If you use TeX and stick with TeX's Computer Modern font then you can be confident that your output will be the same regardless of what output device you use. With troff you never know what fonts will be available at some place until you get there (or ask beforehand). Another problem with troff that has been implied by postings by several people is that many people hack on the troff, eqn, tbl, etc. source code or the macros so that what works at one site may not work at another. One of the goals of Knuth is that any implementation that labels itself as TeX (passes the trip test) should be font and macro (e.g. Plain) compatible with other implementations of TeX. Everything in Knuth's _The TeXbook_ must work. -------------------------------------- rusty c. wright rusty@weyl.berkeley.edu ucbvax!weyl!rusty
elwell@osu-eddie.UUCP (01/27/87)
Sigh. I'll be the first to admit that the Computer Modern fonts are some of the ugliest fonts known to man (I may be biased by my background in medieval calligraphy--I like oldstyle fonts better than modern-style fonts in general). However: NOTHING SAYS YOU HAVE TO USE ONLY CMR WITH TeX! All you need are the appropriate font metric files. The TeX distribution includes tools for constructing them for any font. I myself regularly use Times Roman and ITC Palatino on an Apple LaserWriter. I have also used various bizarre fonts on our Xerox 2700 that were never intended to be used by TeX (if Xerox fonts aren't proprietary, nothing is...). Please don't judge teX by the CMR fonts. --Clayton -- ==================== Total Nuclear Annihilation: Clayton Elwell The Ultimate Error Message. Elwell@Ohio-State.ARPA ...!cbosgd!osu-eddie!elwell ====================
kuo@skatter.UUCP (01/27/87)
In article <1244@ucbcad.berkeley.edu>, faustus@ucbcad.berkeley.edu (Wayne A. Christopher) writes: > The one thing I've heard that troff is better than TeX with is tables -- > I've used tbl a lot and it seems to work fine, but others who have used > TeX's table-making facilities complain that they are not very convenient. > (Are there any good macro packages for tables in TeX?) I agree that TeX's table-making is a little complicated, but I think LaTeX may offer some solutions (I have just got the LaTeX book and have not really look into it yet!). However, with the table-making in TeX, I think one has more options to play with. > Other than that, > it's just inertia... Also, what sort of self-respecting UNIX hack would > use a text formatter written in Pascal? :-) > But... but... there is now a version of TeX in C (maybe more than one version; TeX in Common C and the Unix version of TeX is also in C [standard C?]).... I learned TeX first on a VMS machine then moved (not by choice) to a Unix machine having no TeX, but troff. I still like TeX over troff. Even the macro files in TeX is more readable than troff's - to me anyways (:-) ... Peter/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Kuo Bitnet (VMS address) : KUO@SASK Accelerator Laboratory (UUCP address) : "skatter!kuo@sask.uucp" (a.k.a. The Beam Warehouse) Univ. of Saskatchewan uucp (unix address) : !ihnp4!sask!skatter!kuo Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Bitnet address) : !ihnp4!sask.BITNET!kuo CANADA S7N 0W0 Tel. (306) 966-6059 [Disclaimer: all the standard stuff.]
m5d@bobkat.UUCP (01/28/87)
I here lots of people saying that "troff lets me do ASCII previewing
and that's why I use it." There is a nice easy way to do this
with TeX also, although I must confess that I don't know how -- people
just tell me it's so and then hit me.
I don't have any great complaint about troff. I am certain, however,
that TeX output looks better. It is clear to me that TeX works
much harder than troff at setting paragraphs nicely. In fact, I think
that troff just does line-at-a-time justification (I could be wrong).
In defense of troff, I am currently of the opinion that troff source
files are a little easier to work with than TeX source. All of the
troff commands (well, almost all) are stuck at the left column, while
commands to TeX are everywhere.
Seems like my opinions on this subject are rather weak.
--
**** ****
**** At Digital Lynx, we're almost in Garland, but not quite ****
**** ****
Mike McNally Digital Lynx Inc.
Software (not hardware) Person Dallas TX 75243
uucp: {texsun,killer,infotel}!pollux!bobkat!m5d (214) 238-7474roy@phri.UUCP (01/28/87)
In article <106@tg.UUCP> scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: > THE biggest disadvantage of TeX vs. ditroff I can see is the requirement > of TeX to use its own generated fonts (metafont). We've just started getting TeX running here (see my previous articles as to why I hate troff), so I'm not yet a TeXpert (sorry DEK, but TeXnician looks stupid). I don't see why TeX can't use printer-resident fonts. As I understand it, the only thing TeX knows about a font are the character metrics (bounding box, width, etc); it doesn't know anything at all about the shape of a character, or where to put ink on the page. Since you can take a TeX font and define it as a PostScript font, I have to assume that the elements of TeX's and PostScript's models of what a font is map essentially one-to-one with each other. Thus, why can't you take an AFM file for a PostScript font and write a corresponding TeX-style font metric file? You have to have the DVI-to-PostScript translator be able to recognize that hbi10 is really Helvetica-BoldItalic scaled to 10 point, but that seems pretty trivial. -- Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 "you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"
kuo@skatter.UUCP (01/28/87)
In article <24106@rochester.ARPA>, ken@rochester.ARPA (SKY) writes: > On the other hand, some documents need troff, like Unix man pages. > And there is nothing like pic in the TeX world yet. > > Ken One can fake the pic option using the \special{} macro in TeX. When I was at the Phys. Dept. at the Univ. of Toronto, the Geophysics boys were working on including graphics (ie plots etc) into the dvi file by the way of \special. It seems to work fine, dispite a little bug here and there at the beginning. ... Peter/
gore@nucsrl.UUCP (01/28/87)
> / simpson@trwrb.UUCP (Scott Simpson) / 1:48 pm Jan 25, 1987 / > Here is a (surely incomplete) comparison of both troff and TeX. Here are some corrections (or "completions", if you wish). > Troff advantages > ---------------- > > -- Pic > Troff can draw pictures. TeX can't. LaTeX can, and it's very easy to do. > -- nroff > Troff has an equivalent program to output to an ASCII device. > TeX doesn't. This is nice. Unfortunately, besides the obvious things like > line breaks, troff and nroff output does not always come out the same. There are previewers for TeX output, though none are distributed with TeX. > -- Supports many output devices. You must be talking about ditroff then. In the case of both ditroff and TeX, this depends on presence of driver software that converts ditroff or TeX output into the language of the output device. > TeX disadvantages > ----------------- > > -- Cannot draw pictures > TeX is text-only. This is somewhat alleviated with the \special > command. This command allows you to insert device driver specific > calls into TeX's DVI output file. [...] LaTeX 'picture' environment makes drawing pictures easy. It would be nice, though, to have an on-screen graphics editor that could generate LaTeX or pic commands... > Scott Simpson > TRW Electronics and Defense Sector > ...{decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!trwrb!simpson Jacob Gore Northwestern University, Computer Science Research Lab {ihnp4,chinet}!nucsrl!gore
kuo@skatter.UUCP (01/29/87)
In article <2570@phri.UUCP>, roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: > From a purely theoretical standpoint, you can preview troff on an > ASCII CRT or on a line printer. You can't do that with TeX. I do a lot of > writing at home where I don't have a bit-map screen or a laser printer to > proof drafts with. > -- > Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy > System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute > 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Well.. depending on the system you are talking about, one can preview the TeX output. For example, the latest version of TeX (v1.3 I think) for VAX/VMS comes with a pd version of a previewer. It could (I only read about this in the TUGBoat, have not seen or use it yet) preview dvi files on VT100, VT220, VT240/241, TEK4010, and ANSI terminals. As for the micros go, most of them also come with (or you can buy) previewers. Also, someone on the net has a program (called dvidoc I think) allows one to "preview" dvi files on an ASCII printer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Kuo Bitnet (VMS address) : KUO@SASK Accelerator Laboratory (UUCP address) : "skatter!kuo@sask.uucp" (a.k.a. The Beam Warehouse) Univ. of Saskatchewan uucp (unix address) : !ihnp4!sask!skatter!kuo Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Bitnet address) : !ihnp4!sask.BITNET!kuo CANADA S7N 0W0 Tel. (306) 966-6059 [Disclaimer: all the standard stuff.]
scott@tg.UUCP (01/29/87)
Thanks to *ALL* of you who have told me that tfm files can be generated for
other typesetters! However, now that this has be answered, can you see TeX
used for publishing 45,000+ pages each year (the real meaning behind my note)?
Remember, these papers have to include pictures (pic), tables (tbl), and
the ability of typesetting 3-page nuclear physics mathematical proofs (eqn)
in some sane matter so that we don't drive a whole past-up department batty!
PLEASE stop flooding the net/my mail box with info on tfm files :-) now that
I do know about them! THANKS!!!!!!
Scott Barman
{philabs, pyrnj}!tg!scottries@trwrb.UUCP (01/29/87)
In article <999999999.UUCP> jp@.UUCP (Joe Programmer) writes: > [TeX vs. troff ad infinitum] Our site has both TeX(LaTeX) and troff(ms/me/mm). Each have their advantages/disadvantages. One thing that hasn't been mentioned in the debate, is that there are a large number (100K+?) of older and/or non-PC UNIX boxes (like the Altos and Tandy machines) that 1) don't have the disk space to do credit to TeX/LaTeX and/or 2) don't have any decent Pascal compilers. Ya, I know, as soon as I get raised flooring in my den I'm ganna upgrade... ;-). While *every* owner of one of these boxes had access to nroff/troff, the same can't be said for TeX. Marc Ries, trwrb!ries
lien@osu-eddie.UUCP (01/30/87)
From: Yao-Nan Lien <lien>
Superiority is not sufficient to have people to choose a
particular typesetting tool or to switch from one to another.
I am tire of hearing that
"TeX is better, so you should switch to Tex "
Who is going to rewrite my thousands of Shell scripts and papers
written in past 5 years? Those Shell scripts are a mix of
troff, ex, sed, awk, ....etc. I don't even know can TeX support such an
environment or not. What I mean support is the capability of mixing
with other UNIX tools to have a NEW tool quickly by a noraml user.
Could we list out the criteria to evaluate a typesetting tool
from the users' point of view ( NOT SYSTEM PEOPLE's !) first.
Then, give adequate weight to each item we listed for different
types of users. THEN, evaluate these tools against these
criteria.
PS.
There is an article in ACM computing survey ( 3 or 4 year back)
doing an interesting evaluation.
------------------------------------------------------------
Yao-Nan Lien
Department of Computer and Information Science
Ohio State University
2036, Neil Ave. Mall
Columbus, Ohio 43210-1277
Tel 614 292-5236
CSNet : lien@ohio-state.CSNET
Arpa : lien@ohio-state.arpa
UUCP : {cbosgd, ihnp4}!osu-eddie!lienlen@geac.UUCP (Leonard Vanek) (01/30/87)
While I acknowledge the fact that TeX makes it easy to prepare
very attractive typeset-quality documents and that it is
probably easier to use for this purpose than is troff, my
experience as a new user of TeX but a relatively experienced
nroff user is that the price that is paid for this is that some
of the EASY things are much harder, if not impossible, to do.
Since I am new to TeX (atually LaTeX) it is possible that that
problems I have encountered are easily solved. In this case,
please treat this diatribe as an appeal for help. Otherwise, it
can be taken as my negative comment about TeX and LaTeX.
1. Conditional "newpage" for lists seems to be impossible to
achieve without having to hard-code the line length into a
"parbox" command. What happens if I change document styles
and the line length changes accordingly?
Naked n/troff have their ".ne" command, which would have been
all I needed in this case. The n/troff macro sets have their
"keeps", which bracket the text which they are intended to
keep on one page.
All I want to do is print a list consisting of a section
heading and three items without having the heading and one
item at the bottom of one page and the last two items at the
top of the next page.
2. "Verbatim" environments force output into a rather ugly
typewriter font, which cannot be overridden. Besides the fact
that this font is rather ugly, the presence of this font
causes our printer's font buffer to overflow (or something of
the sort) and the fonts for printing section and/or
subsection headings fail to load.
This problem should probably be blamed on the LN03 printer
driver, not TeX, but maybe TeX should be aware of such
limitations and at least give a warning. It took several days
to figure out what was going on, and in the meantime we
wasted reams of paper on test runs as we adjusted the
position of the "end{document}" command.
Thanks for letting me blow off some steam. If there are solutions
to my problems I would love to know about them.
Len
..utzoo!yetti!geac!lenpeterson@milano.UUCP (01/31/87)
In article <827@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>, rusty@weyl.Berkeley.EDU (Rusty Wright) writes: > One of the TeX advantages that you forgot is font compatibility. If > you use TeX and stick with TeX's Computer Modern font then you can be On the contrary, TeX can have more problems than troff with font compatibility at different sites, although you may mean it at a different level than I. The TeX dvi printer form cannot be printed without access to the same font tables that were used to format the document. Troff dvi, on the other hand, has all positioning information built into the dvi data stream. Thus, it is possible to take a troff dvi file and transmit it across the country to another site (or across campus) to another site with different fonts and get it to print reasonably well. A TeX dvi file cannot do this unless you have the same fonts available at both sites. The problem is with the dvi format. In troff you say, for each character: <move x units> <output a character> <move x units> <output... while with TeX you say <output a character and move as over its width><output... which is not possible unless you know how wide the character was when the output was formatted. -- James Peterson peterson@mcc.com or ...sally!im4u!milano!peterson
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (01/31/87)
> My question is this - why does anyone continue to use troff? ... Backward compatibility is a big part of it. Changing a whole bunch of naive users over to a new troff macro set is a large-scale nightmare in itself. Changing the very syntax of the formatting language would be worse. Another consideration is that troff will fit in a 16-bit machine, and TeX hasn't a prayer of doing so. (Yes, there are some subsets that will, but not the whole thing.) This issue is diminishing in importance, but it's not trivial. > besides there are lots of really simple WYSIWYG formatters around today, > so convenience seems unlikely as well. ... "Simple" is the word for most of them. As in "simple-minded". They also have some problems with serious mismatches between the what-you-see device (e.g. 24x80 terminal) and the what-you-get device (e.g. laser printer). -- Legalize Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology freedom! {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (01/31/87)
> I don't know if troff itself has any bugs, but the preprocessors > eqn and tbl surely do. TeX is (probably) bug free. ... What about the macro packages, e.g. LaTeX, which are TeX's equivalent of some of the preprocessors? > -- Pic > Troff can draw pictures. TeX can't. There are now some picture-drawing capabilities for TeX, notably in LaTeX. It still doesn't match the combination of pic, ideal, grap, and chem. Troff's strength is in its preprocessors; the program itself is pretty poor. > -- Can create your own fonts > You can do this in troff too but not nearly as easily. TeX's > companion program METAFONT is very powerful and difficult to use. There's no fundamental reason why you can't use Metafont with troff; it's pretty independent of TeX. The ease of creating fonts for troff depends on the output device and its support software; in some cases it's not bad. Note that creating *good* fonts is in general a job for an expert, not a novice. (Being a hot programmer does not make you a hot font designer, as witness Knuth's fonts.) > -- Highly portable > TeX is written in WEB (Pascal) and runs on virtually everything. > Troff runs on UNIX. Which is highly portable and runs on virtually everything. Admittedly, there is a problem if the environment is constrained to a non-Unix system for other reasons -- few sites are willing to change operating systems just to get a good text formatter. > -- Help facility > TeX is interactive. It will stop and give you short online > help when it finds an error. Troff just continues until it is done > and screws up your output. The other side of this is people who can't stand TeX because it insists on being interactive, blithering at them given the slightest excuse. Whether one prefers this to troff's silence and relatively poor error diagnosis is very much a matter of taste. -- Legalize Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology freedom! {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (01/31/87)
> One of the TeX advantages that you forgot is font compatibility. If > you use TeX and stick with TeX's Computer Modern font then you can be > confident that your output will be the same regardless of what output > device you use... Yup, device-independent ugliness sure is a big win... My impression is that most TeX users who thought about the choice went with TeX because it does a better job on making output *look* good. This means, once they start acquiring a critical eye, avoiding CMR and using whatever good fonts the particular installation and device provide. -- Legalize Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology freedom! {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (01/31/87)
I use troff with the MS macros and, if I can't avoid it, tbl (eqn on very rare occasion, last time I should have I just typed it all in in raw troff, a strange form of amusement I don't recommend.) The documents I am most proud of are those which contain .TL, .AB, .AE, .AU, .AI, .SH and .PP exclusively, on occasion the mysteries of .FS/.FE must be invoked and I've had some reasonable results with .IP, but that's it (tbl means typing .TS and reaching for the manual and hoping one of the examples will do the trick which almost always works.) I just wrote a proposal for a heap of $$ without breaking the above rules, it hadn't really occurred to me whether my ideas may have been better received in some other WP, I hope I haven't erred. Hmm, I didn't even use .FS/.FE in that one tho there was one small table (no rules around the table, that's just asking for trouble.) I've looked at TeX and even installed it, as a programmer I feel queasy putting anything through a 10K line monolithic program which considers Pascal to be its assembler, but you can do what you like, you're adults I presume. I do remember an ancient time when typing of papers and memos was something done by specialized co-workers who mumbled things like "white-out" and "Courier 12 ball". Back then I usually used a legal pad and pencil. Can't say my prose has improved much for the change tho it's nice to discuss serifs and kerning with colleagues, we have so little else in common. Cheers. -Barry Shein, Boston University
ken@rochester.UUCP (02/01/87)
|On the contrary, TeX can have more problems than troff with font |compatibility at different sites, although you may mean it at a |different level than I. The TeX dvi printer form cannot be printed |without access to the same font tables that were used to format the |document. Troff dvi, on the other hand, has all positioning information |built into the dvi data stream. Thus, it is possible to take a |troff dvi file and transmit it across the country to another site |(or across campus) to another site with different fonts and get it to |print reasonably well. A TeX dvi file cannot do this unless you have |the same fonts available at both sites. There are caveats. If you have an identical printer at the other end, yes. If the printer has a different resolution then you have to do scaling. You get less than pleasing placement especially if the fonts at the other end are different. Remember, the positioning info is based on the fonts at the generating machine. I would never send dvi files, either troff or TeX unless absolutely necessary. While -ms or -me based text is portable in theory, I have had better luck porting TeX files. Ken
ken@rochester.UUCP (02/01/87)
|Who is going to rewrite my thousands of Shell scripts and papers |written in past 5 years? Those Shell scripts are a mix of |troff, ex, sed, awk, ....etc. I don't even know can TeX support such an |environment or not. What I mean support is the capability of mixing |with other UNIX tools to have a NEW tool quickly by a noraml user. First off, rewriting papers is a losing proposition from the start. Leave old papers alone. There is no reason tools like WWB can't be made to work for TeX. Detex is the analog of deroff. Surely you must be exaggerating to say you have thousands of shell scripts. |Could we list out the criteria to evaluate a typesetting tool |from the users' point of view ( NOT SYSTEM PEOPLE's !) first. |Then, give adequate weight to each item we listed for different |types of users. THEN, evaluate these tools against these |criteria. I am afraid you are going to have to drag in WYSIWYG editors and all that too. I don't believe in ideology, just what works best for me. If I had a printer accepting the \special command I wouldn't be too proud to use tpic (a TeX version of pic). Drawing pictures in LaTeX is tedious. I would even use physical cut and paste if neccessary. One thing I do like about TeX is there is a community of expert users (present company excluded) willing to share solutions and software. Troff experts are an endangered species. Ken
shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs) (02/02/87)
In article <508@geac.UUCP> len@geac.UUCP (Leonard Vanek) writes: >2. "Verbatim" environments force output into a rather ugly > typewriter font, which cannot be overridden. The verbatim environment is a LaTeX macro. Look for a file "latex.doc" or "latex.tex" in the TeX macros directory. All of LaTeX is there, with the exception of parameters specific to styles, which are in files like "article.doc" and "art11.doc". There are even some comments scattered about! I've had reasonably good luck with my few attempts at tweaking LaTeX things; you should be able to lift the verbatim environment definition and alter a copy of it to use whatever font you want (look for a "tt" in the definition). stan shebs
colonel@sunybcs.UUCP (02/03/87)
> The other side of this is people who can't stand TeX because it insists > on being interactive, blithering at them given the slightest excuse. > Whether one prefers this to troff's silence and relatively poor error > diagnosis is very much a matter of taste. I'm accustomed to troff's barfocity by now. But there's one check that could be implemented easily and would save a lot of distress. Strings and macros share a name space, right? Well, if you define xy as a string and then try to use it as a macro, troff ought to know better! Hack hack! -- Legalize insanity! -- Col. G. L. Sicherman UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel CS: colonel@buffalo-cs BI: colonel@sunybcs, csdsiche@ubvms
ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson) (02/03/87)
> besides there are lots of really simple WYSIWYG formatters around today, > so convenience seems unlikely as well. ... The correct acronym is "WYSIWYSW": "What You See Is What You're Stuck With." Avoiding getting stuck with what you see is one of the big reasons for using troff--especially when it comes time to move the footnotes from the bottoms of the pages to the end of the article (to make the journalmeisters happy). -- TeX is a trademark--at the moment, I forget whose. ACRONYM stands for Abbreviative Character Reduction of Names Yielding Mnemonics. -- UUCP: ..decvax!seismo!elsie!ado ARPA: elsie!ado@seismo.ARPA DEC, VAX, Elsie & Ado are Digital, Borden & Ampex trademarks.
sjl@ukc.ac.uk (S.J.Leviseur) (02/03/87)
In article <7592@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: >> My question is this - why does anyone continue to use troff? ... > .... > >Another consideration is that troff will fit in a 16-bit machine, and TeX >hasn't a prayer of doing so. (Yes, there are some subsets that will, but >not the whole thing.) This issue is diminishing in importance, but it's >not trivial. > Come now, I have TeX on an IBM pc, and it's a lot faster than on a VAX. You can also get TeX for the Mac, Atari ST1040 and Amiga. There may be others, but those are the ones I know of. The only one I have used is on the IBM pc, and that certainly seems to be a full implementation. sean sjl@ukc.ac.uk
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (02/05/87)
In article <588@eneevax.UUCP>, mcgraw@eneevax.UUCP (Timothy J. McGraw) writes: > nroff/troff has served the mainframe publishing world well, > especially at such installations as large daily newspapers where you > find little technical text and need for output better than any laser > printer can offer today. TeX is not restricted to any specific output device. There can be and undoubtably are programs that can happily drive a phototypesetter from TeX DVI files. The TeXbook was done with TeX, and I'm sure Addison-Wesley didn't use 200-300dpi laser printer output as their camera-ready copy. der Mouse USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,utzoo,etc}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse Europe: mcvax!decvax!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse ARPAnet: think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse@harvard.harvard.edu
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (02/05/87)
In article <106@tg.UUCP>, scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: > In conjunction with eqn and ditroff problems, there are many problems > with accents/diacritics. Since I do not know how TeX handles these, Very simple....for example, \'o puts an acute accent on an o. There are grave, acute, circumflex, cedilla, umlaut, whole bunch. In math mode, you can get hat (circumflex-like), check (inverted-circumflex), tilde, acute, grave, dot, double-dot, et cetera....and you can define sequences to access any others available in the fonts you're using. > THE biggest disadvantage of TeX vs. ditroff I can see is the > requirement of TeX to use its own generated fonts (metafont). But it doesn't. > We cannot download fonts to this typesetter nor is it fiscally > feesable to have Information International Inc. [...] digitize these > fonts for us. If you can get the font metric information (character sizes &c), that's all TeX wants.... and from phri!roy.... > Thus, why can't you take an AFM file for a PostScript font and write > a corresponding TeX-style font metric file? You can. It'll even work, if you do it right. We even have programs here which take bitmap images and generate TeX fonts. der Mouse USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,utzoo,etc}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse Europe: mcvax!decvax!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse ARPAnet: think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse@harvard.harvard.edu
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (02/05/87)
In article <765@nrcvax.UUCP>, terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad) writes: > I love troff. I tell it exactly what to do, and it does it. I like > the complete control and flexibility it gives me. I can get it to do > anything I want it to do, and as I use it more I am constantly > learning more about it. I love TeX. I tell it exactly what to do, and it does it. I like the complete control and flexibility it gives me. I can get it to do anything I want it to do, and as I use it more I am constantly learning...waitaminnit, haven't I heard this before? Yes, they are both powerful systems. Each one has its priesthood and fanatical followers. Whatever you want to do, you can probably manage to do it in either one (though depending on what it is, one of them may do it more easily than the other). Please, use whichever one works better for you and don't try to convert the other fanatical followers. It is a waste of time and annoys the people paying for the bandwidth. der Mouse USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,utzoo,etc}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse Europe: mcvax!decvax!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse ARPAnet: think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse@harvard.harvard.edu
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (02/05/87)
In article <1556@trwrb.UUCP>, simpson@trwrb.UUCP (Scott Simpson) writes: > Here is a (surely incomplete) comparison of both troff and TeX. Fine, but I have some comments (on both sides). > Troff advantages > ---------------- > -- Pic > Troff can draw pictures. TeX can't. It can with the correct support software (I'm sure you need support software for troff too, eg, pic and an output driver that supports it). For instance, we have programs which take images, grayscale or binary, and produce TeX fonts and a little TeX file which you \input to print the picture. > TeX disadvantages > ----------------- > But when he wants to modify output routines and such, TeX becomes > complex. If you want to get deep into the guts of troff, I betcha it becomes complex too! > -- Cannot draw pictures Addressed above. > TeX advantages > -------------- > -- Help facility > TeX is interactive. It will stop and give you short online > help when it finds an error. It rarely is much help. ! Missing $ inserted. ..... ? h I've inserted a begin-math/end-math symbol because I think you've left one out. Proceed, with fingers crossed. ? ...gee, I could have told you that much from the first line. der Mouse USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,utzoo,etc}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse Europe: mcvax!decvax!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse ARPAnet: think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse@harvard.harvard.edu
wtho@cgcha.UUCP (Tom Hofmann) (02/05/87)
In article <485@bobkat.UUCP>, m5d@bobkat.UUCP (Mike McNally ) writes: > I am certain, however, > that TeX output looks better. It is clear to me that TeX works > much harder than troff at setting paragraphs nicely. In fact, I think > that troff just does line-at-a-time justification (I could be wrong). You are right, one main advantage of TeX is that it breaks whole paragraphs, not only lines, and uses many parameters to do that. (You can modify them, if necessary.) So TeX does indeed typesetting, and not only word processing (like troff). Tom Hofmann, Scientific Computer Center, CIBA-GEIGY AG, Basle, Switzerland UUCP: ...!mcvax!cernvax!cgcha!wtho
kjp@well.UUCP (02/07/87)
Scott Simpson wrote in the discussion of troff/TEX:
> Troff is documented but not nearly as well.
True, but there are (at least) 3 recent books on troff that
can help. I'll mention the one I co-authored first...
1. troff Typesetting for UNIX(tm) Systems, Sandra L. Emerson and
Karen Paulsell, Prentice-Hall
2. UNIX(tm) NROFF/TROFF A User's Guide, Kevin P. Roddy, Holt
Rinehart and Wilson
3. The author is Narain Gehani, and I think the book is called
Document Formatting on UNIX Systems.
I can't really describe the 2 other books; one person who has seen
all three told me that we spend a lot more time describing all the
troff primitives and their interactions, Gehani focusses more on -mm,
and Roddy on -ms and -me modifications.
Karen Paulsellkuo@skatter.UUCP (02/07/87)
In article <24357@rochester.ARPA>, ken@rochester.ARPA (SKY) writes: > > I would never send dvi files, either troff or TeX unless absolutely > necessary. While -ms or -me based text is portable in theory, I have > had better luck porting TeX files. > > Ken Just for fun one time, I send an dvi file generated by Micro-TeX (from A-W) to be printed on a QMS laser printer on our VMS system. The output from the laser printer is EXACTLY the same as I get from my dot-matrix printer on my PC (ie line breaks and page breaks; of coure I don't mean quality (8-)). So as long as the fonts you use in creating the dvi file is available to the printer on the target machine, you send send dvi files around with no trouble at all. ... Peter/
kuo@skatter.UUCP (02/08/87)
In article <7593@utzoo.UUCP>, henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: > > > -- Help facility > > TeX is interactive. It will stop and give you short online > > help when it finds an error. Troff just continues until it is done > > and screws up your output. > > The other side of this is people who can't stand TeX because it insists > on being interactive, blithering at them given the slightest excuse. > Whether one prefers this to troff's silence and relatively poor error > diagnosis is very much a matter of taste. > -- But (using the VMS version as an example) you can tell TeX to be quite and just plow full speed ahead, error or no error, by using the /batch option. In either case, TeX logs the error and some other info into a log file, which is very useful for finding errors. Troff doesn't do that (does it?). Another thing about troff is: when one needs 10 copies of the same formatted output, one has to run troff 10 times (or unless you photocopy). But with TeX, you just print the dvi file 10 times, not having to re-process the input file again. Or am I wrong about this? ... Peter
terry@nrcvax.UUCP (02/10/87)
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) says: >In article <765@nrcvax.UUCP>, terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad) writes: >> I love troff. I tell it exactly what to do, and it does it. I like >> the complete control and flexibility it gives me. I can get it to do >> anything I want it to do, and as I use it more I am constantly >> learning more about it. > >I love TeX. I tell it exactly what to do, and it does it. I like the >complete control and flexibility it gives me. I can get it to do >anything I want it to do, and as I use it more I am constantly >learning...waitaminnit, haven't I heard this before? > >Yes, they are both powerful systems. Each one has its priesthood and >fanatical followers. Whatever you want to do, you can probably manage >to do it in either one (though depending on what it is, one of them may >do it more easily than the other). Please, use whichever one works >better for you and don't try to convert the other fanatical followers. >It is a waste of time and annoys the people paying for the bandwidth. ***FLAME ON*** Someone asked for people's opinions on TeX and troff. I'm a ``people''. I have an opinion. I stated it. I was not trying to ``convert the other fanatical followers.'' I'm a firm believer in everyone using what works best for themselves and what they are trying to do. But don't criticize me for stating my opinion when asked for it! <<This got a bit stronger, but I deleted the rest. I'm sick and tired of net.wars and don't want to be blamed for starting one.>> ***FLAME OFF*** -- _______________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- without a Terry Grevstad ECNALG Network Research Corporation ihnp4!nrcvax!terry {sdcsvax,hplabs}!sdcrdcf!psivax!nrcvax!terry _______________________________________________________________________ -----------------------------------------------------------------------
kathy@bakerst.UUCP (02/15/87)
In article <296@skatter.UUCP> kuo@skatter.UUCP (Dr. Peter Kuo) writes: > >Another thing about troff is: when one needs 10 copies of the same formatted >output, one has to run troff 10 times (or unless you photocopy). But with TeX, >you just print the dvi file 10 times, not having to re-process the input file >again. Or am I wrong about this? If I understand you correctly, you are wrong. You can process the file ONCE with troff - and then send the processed output to the typesetter 10 times, without having to run troff to reprocess the "raw" file again. Kathy Vincent @ bakerst.UUCP :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: HOME: {ihnp4|mtune|ptsfa} _____ {hplabs|seismo}!kitty _____\__ !bakerst!kathy {burl|mcnc|duke}!ethos _____/ AT&T: ihnp4!wruxh!unix ...!bakerst!wrcola!kathy
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (02/21/87)
> >Another consideration is that troff will fit in a 16-bit machine, and TeX > >hasn't a prayer of doing so... > > Come now, I have TeX on an IBM pc, and it's a lot faster than > on a VAX. You can also get TeX for the Mac, Atari ST1040 and > Amiga. There may be others, but those are the ones I know of. The relevant issue is not width of data path, which is utterly unimportant except for performance, but width of address bus. The PC address bus is 20 bits. On the 68000 machines, it's 24 (more or less, depending on the implementation). The problem is fitting formatters into 16 bits of code plus 16 bits of data (to be generous about it): troff, even ditroff, will, and TeX won't. -- Legalize Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology freedom! {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (02/21/87)
> Another thing about troff is: when one needs 10 copies of the same formatted > output, one has to run troff 10 times (or unless you photocopy). But with TeX, > you just print the dvi file 10 times, not having to re-process the input file > again. Or am I wrong about this? Yes. Unless your troff is doing something bizarre, capturing troff output so you can send it to the device multiple times is no harder than capturing TeX output. -- Legalize Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology freedom! {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry