Re: [Groff] Blast from the past

[Heinz-Jürgen Oertel]

Am Dienstag, 10. Februar 2015, 20:43:10 schrieb Jones, Larry:
> Steffen Nurpmeso <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> > Heinz-Jürgen Oertel <address@hidden> wrote:
> >  |Am Montag, 9. Februar 2015, 16:19:51 schrieb Peter Schaffter:
> >  |> Groffers --
> >  |>
> >  |> I don't see any mention of this in the list archives, and it's too
> >  |> wonderful to miss.  If you want a glimpse of days gone by, have a
> >  |> look at
> >  |>
> >  |>   http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/751318.pdf
> >  |
> >  |I like this statement:
> >  |"ROFF is a computer program which produces esthetically pleasing \
> >  |manuscripts from punched card source texts."
> > 
> > ..and i hoped that it wasn't used for producing the document in
> > question, seldom have i seen such huge gaps in between words, it's
> > almost unreadable (in fact i gave up after a few pages)!
> 
> "This report is itself an example of a ROFF generated manuscript."
> 
> We're talking the dark ages here of line printers and automated typewriters,
> both of which have fixed character spacing. When the only option is to insert
> full spaces, that's the best you can do. (Personally, I'd have opted for a 
> ragged
> margin instead.)
> 
> -Larry Jones 


It was 1972!.
The result is not so bad for a typewriter. Consider that no hyphenation was 
used (or implemented) in roff.

 Heinz