From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 3818 invoked from network); 11 Jan 2022 14:00:29 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 11 Jan 2022 14:00:29 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 6E0D09C1D9; Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:00:28 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 866F89C0CA; Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:00:08 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 799519C0CA; Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:00:06 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C949F9C0BE for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:00:05 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 77C2535E5FF; Tue, 11 Jan 2022 06:00:05 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2022 06:00:05 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: arnold@skeeve.com Message-ID: <20220111140005.GI3441@mcvoy.com> References: <20211231234039.GU31637@mcvoy.com> <20220101005605.GL75481@eureka.lemis.com> <20220101031511.GB8135@mcvoy.com> <20220111015901.GE25103@eureka.lemis.com> <4409b91cd794867d@orthanc.ca> <20220111024218.GE3441@mcvoy.com> <202201110850.20B8oeMZ020212@freefriends.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <202201110850.20B8oeMZ020212@freefriends.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Demise of TeX and groff (was: roff(7)) X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 01:50:40AM -0700, arnold@skeeve.com wrote: > Larry McVoy wrote: > > > Tim O'Reilly got it, wrote a book about it but I think it was > > too little too late. > > That book was open sourced ~ 2 decades ago. It was scanned, OCR'ed > and converted back into troff. See https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/utp/ > and in particular https://github.com/larrykollar/Unix-Text-Processing . Yeah but it is 2022. 2 decades ago is 2002. TeX was first released in 1978. So it had 2+ decades where it was out there, the docs were out there, and Unix was doing the licensing dance. It may be ancient history but troff was not a given on every platform. nroff was there but troff was considered optional, you had to pay for it and a lot of vendors didn't see the value. So the docs and you weren't sure if you would have it at your next job, not good. I really wish it were different, I adore troff, I wrote something called webroff that took -ms input and produced our website (until we got marketing people and they replaced it with something "better", better my ass). I've written papers in TeX and while it isn't horrible, it's not great, I see nothing there that makes me want it over roff.