1 Jan
2022
1 Jan
'22
5:40 a.m.
On Sat, Jan 01, 2022 at 09:07:49AM +1000, George Michaelson wrote:
But macros aside, anyone who had used runoff had a
massively simpler path into roff than TeX. My future was set. The phd
students at Leeds looked down their noses at me for using cryptic .2 letter
inline magic. They were the high priests of things, I was just a computer
operator. Watching them spend weeks and weeks wrangling a one em offset
problem stopping perfection in print was.. entertaining.
I was program committee chair for Linux Expo in 1999 (all that means is
I formatted the proceedings into a book). I let people use LaTex but
encouraged troff. A few people tried out troff and their reaction was
"Wow, that was so easy and groff is really fast!"
The only negative reaction was table of contents complaints, LaTex is
2 pass so it can do them, roff is one pass so you have to fiddle with
things. A lot.
I've used *roff for almost 40 years and I've never had the urge to use
something else. I wrote a paper a while back where they insisted on
LaTex and it just made me like *roff more.
It's Betamax and VHS all over again, the crappy answer won.
--lm