It's a double edged sword. TeX looks better but you instantly know it is
TeX, it has a particular look. Troff looks just fine to me, and you don't
know it is Troff, Word, or what.
Oh, does *roff support Comic Sans now?
This is interesting; I've always felt like I could pick out troff pretty readily; I agree that TeX has a certain "look" to it (at least by default), but I always felt the same about troff as well.
Less flippantly, I know it's TeX is probably mostly about the fonts.
Agreed, I suspect the same is true of my subjective interpretation of troff as well. Well, with TeX, it's the fonts and the math.
- Dan C.