1. troff
[Unix] The gray eminence of Unix text processing; a formatting and
phototypesetting program, written originally in PDP-11 assembler and then
in barely-structured early C by the late Joseph Ossanna, modeled after the
earlier ROFF which was in turn modeled after the
Multics and CTSS program
RUNOFF by Jerome Saltzer (that name came from the
expression “to run off a copy”). A companion program,
nroff, formats output for terminals and line
printers.In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified troff so that it could drive
phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper describing
that work (“A Typesetter-independent troff,” AT&T CSTR
#97) explains troff's durability. After discussing the program's
“obvious deficiencies — a rebarbative input syntax, mysterious
and undocumented properties in some areas, and a voracious appetite for
computer resources” and noting the ugliness and extreme hairiness of
the code and internals, Kernighan concludes: None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating
Ossanna's accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a
remarkably robust tool, taking unbelievable abuse from a
variety of preprocessors and being forced into uses that
were never conceived of in the original design, all with
considerable grace under fire.
The success of TeX and desktop publishing
systems have reduced troff's relative
importance, but this tribute perfectly captures the strengths that secured
troff a place in hacker folklore; indeed,
it could be taken more generally as an indication of those qualities of
good programs that, in the long run, hackers most admire.
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Definitions of troff
