[TUHS] TeX and groff (was: roff(7))

[Blake McBride]

I've used nroff/troff/TeX with many of their various macro packages over
about a 35 years span.  During that time, I've done many single-page
documents as well as documents as long as 350 pages.  I also modified a
version of nroff to create business forms for Laster printers.  This is
still being used commercially.  This is one person's opinion:

1.  Perhaps owing to my limited intelligence, and in spite of the fact that
I've used TeX successfully on many documents, I have never been able to
fully understand TeX.  Apparently, it is too much for me.  Troff, on the
other hand, has made full sense to me.  I was able to make it do what I
wanted almost always.  I enjoy using troff more because I find it simpler,
and therefore, more pleasant to use.

2.  Looking at the output, it is my opinion that TeX produces
better-looking documents.  Perhaps this is just no more than one man's
esthetic opinion.  I do not know what it is that I find better.  It's just
the sense I get.  On the other hand, I find troff output to be sufficiently
good in nearly all cases.

3.  troff is a good and reasonable tool.  TeX is too big and complex an
environment in most cases.  Although it is true that all of the complexity
of the TeX environment is successfully hidden in virtually all cases.  I
find the huge and complex environment offputting.

Very unfortunately, I see troff disappearing.  I've worked with a number of
teams over the last ten years.  In every case, I was the oldest engineer.
Also, in each case, I was the only engineer who had even heard of troff.
They understand the problems of binary formats such as Word and
OpenOffice.  Their solutions are things like markdown, AsciiDoc, et al.
They are doing this development and making use of these tools without
knowledge of troff.  The same is true to a greater or lesser degree with
TeX, except that I've seen TeX used at universities.

I like that groff and TeX are rock solid and well supported.  In fact, I
wrote a report generator for a modern web development framework using
troff.  I use it to develop reports on a routine basis.  (kissweb.org)
Sadly, however, if word of their existence doesn't get out there, I see
them both disappearing in not much longer than a generation.  This would be
sad indeed.

Blake McBride


On Fri, Dec 31, 2021 at 9:16 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 01, 2022 at 11:56:05AM +1100, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> > > The only negative reaction was table of contents complaints, LaTex is
> > > 2 pass so it can do them, roff is one pass so you have to fiddle with
> > > things.  A lot.
> >
> > I solved that issue in later documents with two passes in the Makefile
> > targets, frobbing things like references and contents in between.
>
> I was troff friends with W Richard Stevens, he shared with me a lot of
> what he did in troff.  He did the two pass thing.  Nice guy and got as
> much out of roff that anyone could, all of his books were troff.
>
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