draw a pretty timeline graphic w/ text?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>

| I don't know why *roff didn't take off.  It could be that paragraphs are
| difficult to read due all the markups (you know what I mean if you ever
| read the manpage source), but you can say that for LaTeX or HTML also.

It did take off in the UNIX world.  In fact, it was the justification
for UNIX in the early days: the first business application was
preparing Bell copyright applications (beware: this is from my mouldy
memory).

The design was inhumane.  And the author (Joe Osanna) died early.

- the extension capabilities (macros) are quite awkward

- names of things were one or two letters in a global per-kind
  namespace

- it had no model of document structure

SoftQuad's version of troff was better but it cost money.  I assume
groff is also better, but it came a bit late.

Theoretically, Brian Reid's Script(TM) system was better.  The markup
told the system the document structure and formatting was the
processor's job.  I assume Script had style-sheets.

Script was expensive and only available on large machines (DECSystem
10?).  But it was much imitated.  For example, LaTeX appears to be an
imitation implemented in TeX macros.

I used Perfect Writer, a Scribe knock-off that came bundled with my
Kaypro II (a Z80 system with 64K of RAM).  That product evolved into
Borland's Sprint before it died.

Speaking of TeX.  It was done by a perfectionist to scratch his own
itch.  Better than troff in many ways but worse in others.  The macro
mechanism isn't quite good enough to make LaTeX's implementation look
good.

MS Word has some of the Script religion, but only if you look for it.  It 
is swamped by WYSIWYG cruft.
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