Re: DocLang

In article <[email protected]>,
Bob Eager  <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Wed, 17 Jun 2026 18:41:06 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=  <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>On Tue, 16 Jun 2026 19:17:43 -0400 (EDT), Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>
>>>> Why can't people just use TeX markup like God and Knuth intended?
>>>
>>>Because troff came first.
>> 
>> troff was just an updated runoff.  TeX was a different order of
>> magnitude;
>> it was up with commercial typesetting systems like Xics.
>> --scott
>
>troff was a development of roff, which included some typesetting features. 
>roff was named as a UNIX-style (shorter word) version of DEC's Runoff.

Early Unix roff was a cousin of DEC's Runoff; more immediately,
it is a descendent of McIlroy's BCPL roff[*] on Multics, which
in turn descends from Saltzer's RUNOFF on CTSS.

DEC's version was inspired by the versions on CTSS and Multics
(and apparently GENIE?), but is an independent implementation.

Unix roff became nroff ("new roff"), and `troff` adapted it for
use with a phototypesetter ("typesetter roff", hence "troff").

	- Dan C.

[*] Wikipedia says that the Unix version was actually more
directly influenced by a PL/1 version on Multics that came after
McIlroy's (in 1974).  I've never heard this before, and I think
it is inaccurate: the timelines don't match up.  Unix `roff`
existed well before 1974, and BTL had pulled out of Multics by
then, anyway.