From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <gwyn@arl.army.mil>
Message-ID: <3A59E217.D84DBB99@arl.army.mil>
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References: <20010107151801.CD357199F7@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] off topic: troff book
Date: Mon,  8 Jan 2001 16:18:56 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 4832a55e-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

rob pike wrote:
> - why create a layout language that produces
> only one layout; why create a font language if only one person
> in the world can use it to make a font - it rankles.

As I recall, Knuth started development of TeX and Metafont
because he was dissatisfied with the appearance of one edition
of TAOCP.  I have never seen any evidence that he is familiar
with troff or even with Unix.

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.