[TUHS] troff was not so widely usable (was: The UNIX Command Language (1976))

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 12:48:49PM -0800, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> At Mon, 30 Nov 2020 11:54:37 -0500, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] The UNIX Command Language (1976)
> >
> > yes ... but ... even UNIX binary folks had troff licenses and many/most at
> > ditroff licenses.
> 
> I would like to try once again to dispell the apparent myth that troff
> was readily available to Unix users in wider circles.

I had n/troff on the BSD based vaxen that UW-Madison CS had.  There was
a standard binder of docs (that I still have 35+ years later) that had
the troff, -ms, -man, -me, tbl, eqn, pic, refer docs (no grap, sadly,
I wrote my own).

The Masscomps I used had working roffs.  I've been using troff since
well before 1985 (I found that Masscomp restor.e doc, it was 1985 but
I was well into troff by then, I started with -man and -ms but was 
experimenting with -me for that paper.  I liked -me well enough but
-ms just made more sense to me so I went back to that and have been
there ever since).

The 3B1 that my roommate and I shared had working roff.

I don't remember how we got stuff printed, I was for sure using troff
for years before the postscript one came about.  

So for once, I'm gonna side with Clem on this one.  I've always had
troff and been very happy with it.  I know LaTex sort of won but I'm
not a fan.

--lm

P.S.  Groff is C++, not C.  That made it dicey until g++ got stable.