david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) (01/28/87)
In a word, DRIVERS. I have been trying for over a year now to obtain a ditroff driver for our LN03 laser. Guess what? Nobody's got one! So I take a look at TeX -- an LN03 driver right on the distribution tape! WOW. A number of people have been stating that troff comes with UNIX. This may be true (although some vendors charge extra for the stuff) but how many people have the equipment to use the standard drivers supplied with troff? How many people have not hit at lease one major troff stupidity? With TeX, I get full source, documentation, a driver for our laser, LaTeX, BibTeX, SliTeX and a host of public-domain software - for free! I can buy previewers for IBM and Macintosh devices and can even subscribe to a newletter to tell me more. If a real problem arises, I can even contact Richard Furuta or Donald Knuth. Try to find anyone who knows Troff that well. -david- -- ========================================================================== David Haynes (utzoo!yetti!geac!david) Geac Computers International Inc. +1 416 475 0525 x 3420 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, CANADA, L3R 1B3
scott@tg.UUCP (01/31/87)
In article <505@geac.UUCP> david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) writes: > >In a word, DRIVERS. > >I have been trying for over a year now to obtain a >ditroff driver for our LN03 laser. Guess what? >Nobody's got one! So I take a look at TeX -- an >LN03 driver right on the distribution tape! WOW. The machine I am now using (and have done some consulting work for) has an LN03 and LN03-Plus and they use ditroff to output to it. I don't think you've looked too hard either. Open "Unix/World" or "Unix Review" and check out the ads for ditroff stuff since I think I've seen a couple of folks advertise they have it! I think SoftQuaid of Toronto, Canada has it. Besides, if you have WWB or DWB source, drivers are not difficult to write, just use an existing one as a guide... that's what I did! >A number of people have been stating that troff >comes with UNIX. This may be true (although some >vendors charge extra for the stuff) but how many >people have the equipment to use the standard >drivers supplied with troff? How many people have >not hit at lease one major troff stupidity? I just finished a driver for a VideoComp 500 phototypesetter for two different emulations and both programs compile well under 100K on a VAX. The Imagen driver (which I had to hack for the environment) handles both host resident and printer resident fonts and is under 150K. The font description files for each in source and compiled form takes up negligable amounts of space. The disk hogs are the Computer Modern raster files for the Imagen. Also, how many people can find a TeX stupidity? There are enough, just read this news group. >With TeX, I get full source, documentation, a driver >for our laser, LaTeX, BibTeX, SliTeX and a host of >public-domain software - for free! I can buy previewers >for IBM and Macintosh devices and can even subscribe >to a newletter to tell me more. If a real problem >arises, I can even contact Richard Furuta or Donald Knuth. And, if you buy DWB from AT&T you can call them, or querry this news group! >Try to find anyone who knows Troff that well. I am available! :-) >-david- Scott Barman {philabs, pyrnj}!tg!scott
david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) (02/02/87)
I normally would have replied via email, but this one rankles me just a tad, so what the hell... In article <112@tg.UUCP> scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: >In article <505@geac.UUCP> david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) writes: >> >>In a word, DRIVERS. >> >>I have been trying for over a year now to obtain a >>ditroff driver for our LN03 laser. Guess what? >>Nobody's got one! So I take a look at TeX -- an >>LN03 driver right on the distribution tape! WOW. >The machine I am now using (and have done some consulting work for) has >an LN03 and LN03-Plus and they use ditroff to output to it. I don't think >you've looked too hard either. Harder than you think laddie. > Open "Unix/World" or "Unix Review" and >check out the ads for ditroff stuff since I think I've seen a couple >of folks advertise they have it! I think SoftQuaid of Toronto, Canada >has it. What SoftQuad has is good vapurware. I have had an outstanding purchase order against their LN03 driver and ditroff stuff for over four months now. > Besides, if you have WWB or DWB source, >drivers are not difficult to write, just use an existing one as a guide... >that's what I did! And guess what? SoftQuad is the sole distributor of DWB in Canada. Think they are going to sell me DWB without the LN03 driver which doesn't exist? > >>A number of people have been stating that troff >>comes with UNIX. This may be true (although some >>vendors charge extra for the stuff) but how many >>people have the equipment to use the standard >>drivers supplied with troff? How many people have >>not hit at lease one major troff stupidity? >I just finished a driver for a VideoComp 500 phototypesetter for two different >emulations and both programs compile well under 100K on a VAX. The Imagen >driver (which I had to hack for the environment) handles both host resident >and printer resident fonts and is under 150K. The font description files >for each in source and compiled form takes up negligable amounts of space. So your solution to everyone who wants ditroff is to write a driver for it? Why should I do this, when I can get the LN03 dvi driver for free? How do you cost-justify that? Can you say "business sense"? I knew you could! >The disk hogs are the Computer Modern raster files for the Imagen. >Also, how many people can find a TeX stupidity? There are enough, just read >this news group. > >>With TeX, I get full source, documentation, a driver >>for our laser, LaTeX, BibTeX, SliTeX and a host of >>public-domain software - for free! I can buy previewers >>for IBM and Macintosh devices and can even subscribe >>to a newletter to tell me more. If a real problem >>arises, I can even contact Richard Furuta or Donald Knuth. >And, if you buy DWB from AT&T you can call them, or querry this news group! AT&T Canada wouldn't know ditroff if it came up and bit them! AT&T Stateside will help me if they can show me a legally registered as owning DWB. I can't get DWB, if I did, the registration would be in Canada, and AT&T stateside would not help me. (For those who disbelieve - I recently wanted to attend a course on UNIX internals in San Fransisco. I spent four f**king days talking to AT&T Canada, AT&T stateside, the vendours of the course and various other people trying to get them all to agree that I owned a System V source license and could, therefore, attend the course. The entire problem focussed around the problem that AT&T stateside did not have a copy of my license registered in the states.) > >>Try to find anyone who knows Troff that well. >I am available! :-) > Oh really? Want a standard troff package that will blow your ditroff to hell? What to tell me how to fix it. It worked fine with the original Troff - core dumps now! > >>-david- > >Scott Barman >{philabs, pyrnj}!tg!scott Whew! I guess what really steamed me about this is a) it was *incredibly* condescending and b) Scott assumes that all the world in the United States. Now, some of you might like to believe that :-) but the rest of us have to live in the real world. For the record, I do not believe that the sun shines out of TeX's *ss, but I do not believe that troff (or ditroff) is a viable alternative. And, I think that, given time and the amount of development effort that is going into TeX, that the eventual winner of the race will be TeX. -david- (From the land of the frozen north) -- ========================================================================== David Haynes (utzoo!yetti!geac!david) Geac Computers International Inc. +1 416 475 0525 x 3420 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, CANADA, L3R 1B3
scott@tg.UUCP (02/07/87)
In article <513@geac.UUCP> david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) writes: >I normally would have replied via email, but this one rankles me >just a tad, so what the hell... I would too, but some classless people have the tendency to attack rather then comment! >In article <112@tg.UUCP> scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: >>In article <505@geac.UUCP> david@geac.UUCP (David Haynes) writes: >>> >>>In a word, DRIVERS. >>> ... deleted for space reasons ... >Harder than you think laddie. Sorry guy, I did mine from WWB 1.0 and FOUND NO PROBLEMS! I did it without help from AT&T or anyone else! I took the d202.c driver as a guide and went to it! I also do things like this (programming) for a living and see no problems (at another office in the orgianzation, someone else did similar for the APS Micro-5 phototypesetter - NO PROBLEMS). With the manual of the output device at your side, you should have no problems (as I repeat). >> Besides, if you have WWB or DWB source, >>drivers are not difficult to write, just use an existing one as a guide... >>that's what I did! > >And guess what? SoftQuad is the sole distributor of DWB in Canada. >Think they are going to sell me DWB without the LN03 driver which >doesn't exist? And if you would have read the rest, I think I said that you can write on from the sources of other drivers. If they sell the DWB package (which should come with drivers) then you can use others as a guide as I and others did! If you can't get the source to the older drivers, the docuemtation for the ditroff output and compiled device files are availble somewhere (I just don't know where at this point :-)). >>>A number of people have been stating that troff >>>comes with UNIX. This may be true ... >>> ... deleted for space reasons .... >>I just finished a driver for a VideoComp 500 phototypesetter for two different >>emulations and both programs compile well under 100K on a VAX. The Imagen >>driver (which I had to hack for the environment) handles both host resident >>and printer resident fonts and is under 150K. The font description files >>for each in source and compiled form takes up negligable amounts of space. > >So your solution to everyone who wants ditroff is to write a driver for >it? Why should I do this, when I can get the LN03 dvi driver for free? >How do you cost-justify that? Can you say "business sense"? I knew you could! Can you say no other option? Can you say common sense? Can you say justify the cost of buying TeX, getting it running, and retraining people to use it? Can you say the gist of the posting is what can be done with ditroff? I don't think you can! All I suggested that if it can't be bought, how about writing one yourself? >AT&T Canada wouldn't know ditroff if it came up and bit them! >AT&T Stateside will help me if they can show me a legally registered >as owning DWB. I can't get DWB, if I did, the registration would be >in Canada, and AT&T stateside would not help me. > ... tirade on AT&T source license deleted ... Sorry, this is AT&T's problem! You deal with AT&T and you pay their prices. This is nothing I can help with! >>>Try to find anyone who knows Troff that well. >>I am available! :-) >> >Oh really? Want a standard troff package that will blow your >ditroff to hell? What to tell me how to fix it. It worked >fine with the original Troff - core dumps now! Is this supposed to be a joke or did you forget the meaning of the :-)? You want me to consider a problem, ask, ask the net, just ASK! Isn't that what this news group is for? >Whew! I guess what really steamed me about this is a) it was *incredibly* >condescending and b) Scott assumes that all the world in the United States. >Now, some of you might like to believe that :-) but the rest of us have >to live in the real world. > >For the record, I do not believe that the sun shines out of TeX's *ss, but >I do not believe that troff (or ditroff) is a viable alternative. And, I >think that, given time and the amount of development effort that is going >into TeX, that the eventual winner of the race will be TeX. For the record sir, *IF* you have read my past postings, I have clearly said that I do not have experince with TeX and can only relate my extensive experience with ditroff. I have, in the past, publicly admitted when I was wrong and will do so when that time arrives. Can it be that you just read the article wrong? I think so! Also, my assumption is that AT&T's support is the same (or an attempt of the same) across international boundries. I apologize for not knowing that AT&T Canada has problems supporting their software. However, I know that this is a worldwide network and realize not all works the same outside the US than in the US. I would assume AT&T Canada would be able to help, I guess not :-). My posting was *suggestions* as to what to do, not an attack on TeX or anyone. However if you have problems in the future with my articles, send me mail and I will answer you as soon as possible and let's not get into a mudslinging contest on the net! >-david- Scott Barman {philabs, pyrnj}!tg!scott