Invisible wrote:
>>> "The troff(1) typesetting formatter was, as we noted in Chapter 2,
>>> Unix's original killer application."
>>>
>>> Oh really?
>>
>> Yes. troff is what runs when you say "man bash" for example.
> 
> Oh, so *that's* what that does?
> 
> So when it says "reformatting manpage", it's running troff?

Well, technically, nroff, which takes the same input as troff and tries to 
put it on an ASCII stream. Kind of like the difference between firefox and lynx.

> I've always thought that manpages and the ugliest, lamest, most archaic 
> thing ever, so I don't see that that's much of an advantage.

Except it was (one of) the first macro-driven multi-output typesetting tool.


> (On the other hand, today's reading suggests that troff is really 
> designed to control phototypesetters - whatever those are - and not 
> produce stuff on screen...)

A phototypesetter is how you used to do high-quality typesetting before 
laser printers. Think of it as a daisywheel laser printer.

>>> Really? The design of PostScript looks fairly UNeconomical to me.
>>
>> No, the *program* is economical.
> 
> So you mean it lets you do what you want done without writing too much 
> code?

Yes.  Considering that it's designed to be shipped over a serial line, 
that's a good thing compared to shipping gigabyte bitmaps.

> Well, it has C-style syntax 

No it doesn't. Unless you mean curly braces.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message