[TUHS] troff was not so widely usable (was: The UNIX Command Language (1976))

["Greg A. Woods" <woods@robohack.ca>]

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At Mon, 30 Nov 2020 11:54:37 -0500, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [TUHS] The UNIX Command Language (1976)
>
> yes ... but ... even UNIX binary folks had troff licenses and many/most at
> ditroff licenses.

I would like to try once again to dispell the apparent myth that troff
was readily available to Unix users in wider circles.

True, old troff might have been there in the distribution, but not
necessarily as many vendors didn't include it even though they had the
license since they knew most users didn't care about it, and of course
the users didn't care about troff because _nobody_ had a C/A/T, (and
hardly anyone cared to use nroff to format things for line printers).
People would install Wordstar long before they even thought about using
nroff.

Ditroff (or sqtroff) was also incredibly rare to non-existent for 99% of
the Unix sites I worked at and visited; even some time after it became
available.  Even sites running native AT&T Unix, e.g. on 3B2s, and thus
could easily obtain it, often didn't want the added expense of
installing it.

So, old troff was basically a total useless waste of disk space until
psroff came along.

Psroff made troff useful, but IF And Only IF you had a C compiler _and_
the skill to install it.  That combination was still incredibly rare.  A
C compiler was often the biggest impediment to many sites I worked at --
they didn't have programmers and they didn't want to shell out even cash
more for any programming tools (even though they had often hired me as a
consulting programmer to "fix their Unix system"!).

Then, as you said, Groff arrived, though still that required a C
compiler and (effectively for some time) a PostScript printer (while
psroff would drive the far more common laserjet and similar without
gyrations through DVI!).

In circles I travelled through if one wanted true computer typesetting
support it was _far_ easier and better (even after Groff came along) to
install TeX, even if it meant hiring a consultant to do it, since that
meant having far wider printer support (though realistically PostScript
printers were the only viable solution at some point, e.g. especially
after laser printers became available, i.e. outside Xerox and IBM shops).

> I think the academics went LaTex and that had more to do with it.   LaTex
> was closer to Scribe for the PDP-10s and Vaxen, which had a short head lead
> on all them until it went walled garden when CMU sold the rights (and even
> its author - Brian Ried) could not use it at a Stanford.

I worked with a group of guys who were extreme fans of the PlainTeX
macros (and who absolutely hated LaTeX).  They came from academic
circles and commercial research groups.

But I agree it was those other factors that have lead to an ongoing
prevalence for TeX, and in particular its LaTeX macros; over and above
troff and anything else like either in the computer typesetting world.

I was never a fan of anything TeX (nor of anything SGML-like).

I was quite a fan of, and an extreme expert in using, troff and tbl.
However once I discovered Lout I dropped troff like a hot potato.

I continue to use Lout exclusively to this day for "fine" typesetting
work (anything that needs/prefers physical printing or a PDF).

--
					Greg A. Woods <gwoods@acm.org>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>     Avoncote Farms <woods@avoncote.ca>

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