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

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Thursday, 26 July 2018 at  8:22:54 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 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:
>>> 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.

They were the ideal reference when I used TeX.  That was my point.
Clearly it has improved, but too late for me.

> 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.

They were available for groff, and O'Reilly gave me a set of Garamond
Light (their fonts of the day).  I briefly considered using them for
TeX, but that ended up in the "too hard" basket.

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

Exactly.  And of course my aversion to TeX documents relates to
exactly that look.  Probably there are many documents that I just
don't recognize.

Greg
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