Re: [9fans] troff and ps related

[Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Rudolf Sykora<rudolf.sykora@gmail.com> wrote:
> But now (from the answers to my questions about boxes, tables) I am
> becoming less enthusiastic. Can anybody comment on this? Do you think
> that troff is really dead?

Like most things in life, the answer is an emphatic, "it depends."

Weighing in as a mathematician (which I am by training, if not
profession) I have to say that if you are typesetting mathematics, TeX
(or more appropriately LaTeX) is the way to go for a variety of
reasons, not the least of which is a sizable community that accepts it
as the standard.  Eqn, while simpler, just doesn't cut it.

If, on the other hand, one has to typeset prose or something like a
manual page or technical report (minus a lot of math) then I prefer
troff because it's simpler.  But I'm sure that's partly a function of
the way I "grew up" with respect to typesetting.

These days all the kids are excited about DocBook and XML.  I'm sure
there will be howls of protest, but honestly I think it's a reasonable
format for many things, with the added benefit that I can transform it
into a number of other formats: such is the nature of XML.  It may
suck in many ways, it may violate the purity of the traditional Unix
model, it may be abused into applications where it is not well suited,
but that doesn't mean it doesn't have utility.

So is troff dead?  No, but as Russ points out with his pocket knife
analogy, it is inanimate and thus was never alive.  Asking whether
it's dead is the wrong question because, in the end, it's just another
tool: use it if it's appropriate, or don't.  It all depends on what
you're trying to accomplish and whether you can do that in the
simplest, most direct manner.

        - Dan C.