From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Dan Cross Message-Id: <200101082007.PAA15794@augusta.math.psu.edu> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] off topic: troff book In-Reply-To: <3A59E217.D84DBB99@arl.army.mil> References: <20010107151801.CD357199F7@mail.cse.psu.edu> Cc: Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 15:07:50 -0500 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 484f91dc-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Rob Pike wrote: >> - why create a layout language that produces >> only one layout; By this, surely you mean LaTeX? Why create -ms, which basically produces one layout? >> why create a font language if only one person >> in the world can use it to make a font - it rankles. Hmmm..... I'm not sure that's fair. I suspect that more people know how to use Metafont than perhaps know raw troff. I could be wrong, perhaps. btw- I kind of like the CM fonts; I think they're rather nice looking. I like troff's output also, though. Doug Gwyn writes: >As I recall, Knuth started development of TeX and Metafont >because he was dissatisfied with the appearance of one edition >of TAOCP. I believe that's the story in, ``Digital Typography.'' >I have never seen any evidence that he is familiar >with troff or even with Unix. ...except for the fact that he sits in front of a Sun workstation? :-) Come, surely Knuth knows about troff. I don't know that he was familiar with it at the time he embarked on the TeX project, though. >I will agree that TeX is capable of producing nicer >mathematical copy than eqn|troff with a reasonable amount of >effort. I personally don't think that repays the loss of >Knuth's time that could have been spent working on additional >volumes of TAOCP. I don't know, he considered it important enough to spend 10 years on it. Remember: There Is No Royal Road to Programs, and he seems to have done a pretty good job on ellipses using that diamond shaped pen, eh? :-) - Dan C.