[COFF] roff vs. Tex (was: Looking for final C compiler by Dennis Ritchie)

[Perry E. Metzger]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 14:22:20 +1000 Greg 'groggy' Lehey
<grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 17:24:40 -0400, Perry E. Metzger
> wrote:
> > On Tue, 24 Jul 2018 13:52:06 +1000 Greg 'groggy' Lehey
> > <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> >> On Monday, 23 July 2018 at 12:41:46 -0400, Dan Cross wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 11:56 AM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >> My big issue was that it produces nicer output than TeX.  In
> >> those days at any rate you could tell TeX output a mile off
> >> because of the excessive margins and the Computer Modern fonts.
> >> Neither is required, of course, but it seems that it must have
> >> been so much more difficult to change than it was with [gt]roff
> >> (or that the authors just didn't care).
> >
> > It's a single command most of the time to change font.
> >
> >    \usepackage{palatino}
> >
> > for example. (That's at the start of many of my documents.)
>
> That's the case now, I assume.  I've just dragged out the TeXbook
> (February 1989), LaTeX user's guide and reference (referring to
> LaTeX 2.06 (April 1986)) and "TeX for the Impatient" (1990).  None
> of them mention this command,

It's true, books that are thirty years old and over might not be the
best reference for the software.

Even back then, though, the commands involved were pretty simple. They
just weren't mentioned in the books you read, probably because in 1986
and the like there weren't an abundance of fonts available.

(I never use the CMR fonts except in my CV. There, it's a signal that
it was written in TeX.)

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com