[TUHS] troff.org and the old bell-labs.com domain

[Larry McVoy via TUHS]

On Sat, May 23, 2026 at 10:12:25AM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 06:42:51PM -0700, Larry McVoy via TUHS wrote:
> > I think that LaTex won because of marketing.  I'm a huge troff fan, the
> > BitKeeper logo was done in troff, I've done a lot of good things in troff,
> > I modernized the -ms macros to look better and they did.
> 
> I'm sure a lot of it is what you're used to, but I think many people found:
> 
> \[ s = \sqrt{\frac{\sum_{i=1}^N (x_i - \bar{x})^2}{N - 1}} \]
> 
> simpler than:
> 
> .EQ
> s = sqrt { { sum from i=1 to N ( x sub i - x bar ) sup 2 } over { N - 1 } }
> .EN

Maybe it's my history but I find the troff version much easier to read.
I like pic(1) and it reads a lot like that.

Part of the beauty of pic is that it was invented when getting a print out
was likely an over night thing.  And there were no bit mapped displays so
you had to be able to look at the code and imagine it in your brain.  If
you couldn't you were in for a long slow slog before you got things right.

> I suspect that people also found it simpler to right macros in
> TeX/LaTex compared to troff.  For example. consider:
> 
> \def\highlight#1{\bf #1}
> 
> This allows you to write something like:
> 
> This is \highlight{important}
> 
> where important will be bolded.
> 
> The rough equivalent in groff would be something like
> 
> .DE HIGHLIGHT
> \fB\\$1\fR
> ..
> 
> And:
> 
> This is
> .HIGHLIGHT important

Again, I like the troff one better.  It's probably because I'm a source
management person and the troff thing of starting a macro on a new line
means you break up the text.  LaTex lets you make the whole document in
one line if you like, and that is a nightmare for version control.

> I don't think it's say that LaTeX one out over troff just because of
> "marketing".

I shouldn't have said marketing, that's not quite it.  For a long time,
the troff documentation was locked up.  I had it in paper form because
UW-Madison made me buy it.  But I couldn't make a copy and hand it to
someone because $LICENSES.  I think that gave an opening to LaTex and
LaTex took it.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat