[TUHS] Fun with early troff.

[khm@sciops.net (Kurt H Maier)]

On Tue, May 08, 2018 at 04:14:54PM -0400, Dan Cross wrote:
>
> For example, there is a NATO-standard "10-line" message

When did they add the 10th line?  What is in it?  I was trained on the
9-line during my service, and I'd be fascinated to know what extra info
was judged important enough to update the manuals.

> 
> Yup. Troff. I took it to war.
> 

It's been well over a decade, but there were QRF bases in Kabul whose
security manuals and operation maps were generated onsite in TeX on my 
ancient Thinkpad.  I suspect, however, an academic study of combat-zone 
typesetting would be dominated by the inevitability of Powerpoint.

I've often noticed the battlefield is ruled by Windows (e.g. those
pilots were probably poking at Falconview) while the research side is
extremely tied to unix and its ilk.  Obviously BRLCAD and other ARL
involvement here, and just about all of of the DoD HPC program skews
toward unix and linux.

khm