From: erc@apple.com (Ed Carp) Subject: Re: Why WYSIWYG is for IQ < 120 Date: 8 Aug 1993 10:46:03 GMT
Roland Kwee (rkwee@ursula.ee.pdx.edu) wrote:
: I read with interest the comments on troff and why it is more productive
: that wysiwyg. But why should anyone use troff when there is TeX? I am
: using TeX and LaTeX, but don't know much about troff. Many books have
: been written with (La)TeX, e.g., Numerical Recipes, Guy Steele's book
: on Common Lisp, the 1986 series of DEC/VAX manuals (the Red Wall).
Because almost every UNIX machine in the entire civilized universe (with the
possible exception of Caradssia, which still uses CP/M on an 8-bit machine
and makes its programmers write in 8080 ASM) has troff on it. Relatively
few UNIX machines outside academia have TeX installed. I'm sure you've
noticed that the books written with TeX are written by folks in academia,
not by folks in the business world.
This is not a slam of TeX or of academia - just the observation that there
are a lot of unix sites that have troff, and relatively few that have TeX.
That's like asking "why don't more people use unix instead of MS-DOS?"
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@apple.com 510/659-9560
anon-2133@twwells.com
If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than
steel! -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"