🚀 go-pugleaf

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