I have a quite elaborate document that uses eqn, pic, and tbl. In fact one table contains both pic and eqn entries (but not subtables; Latex beats roff in being recursive). Take a look at www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/wallpaper.pdf. If you think you'd like to see the source, just holler. Sadly, math journals often demand Latex, but I've also run into journals that require Word. I wanted to submit the document above to a cartography journal until I found out they were in the Word camp. I was, however, able to convert it to Latex. At one point the American Instutute of Physics took only roff (and retypeset other manuscripts--in roff). I don't know what their practice is q now. No manuals, true. But if there had been they would have been in some version of roff, just as all Research Unix manuals were. Doug