Talk:troff

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Troff article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Computing: Software / Free and open-source software Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Software.
	This article is supported by Free and open-source software (assessed as Mid-importance).

Linux Mid‑importance

	Linux portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linux, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Linux on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinuxWikipedia:WikiProject LinuxTemplate:WikiProject LinuxLinux articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Plan 9 (inactive)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Plan 9, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.Plan 9Wikipedia:WikiProject Plan 9Template:WikiProject Plan 9Plan 9 articles

Questionable copying[edit]

Please compare the history section of this article with the history section here: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/groff/groff.html#SEC4 While copying is permitted the document also states

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Foundation.

It seems the conditions have not been met. Having diff-ed the two sections it seems more than half the text is identical, a few words have been trivially changed (such as "PDP7" to "PDP-7" and "which" to "that") and a few paragraphs replaced. Assuming good faith I am not calling this a massive copyright violation, rather I am looking for clarifications. --21:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.164.176.22 (talk)

Hmm, disregarding copyright issues, I think the History section needs a rewrite. The article is written like a man page on a Unix clone. It should instead concentrate on being an encyclopedic article and most details in the history section is superfluous and irrelevant to an encyclopedia. But foremost the intro should explain what troff is really, not just a "document processing system". Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 18:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

History should have dates[edit]

The history lacks dates (for instance, when did troff first appear, when did ditroff replace it, etc). That information is available in CAT_(phototypesetter)#Timeline Rps (talk) 17:09, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Example?[edit]

This article could benefit from an example of input markup and output, I think. 70.175.192.217 (talk) 21:05, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]