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DITROFF(7)                                                          DITROFF(7)




NAME

       ditroff - classical device independent roff


DESCRIPTION

       The name ditroff once marked a development level of the troff text pro-
       cessing system.  In actual roff(7) systems, the name troff is used as a
       synonym for ditroff.

       The  first  roff system was written by Joe Osanna around 1973.  It sup-
       ported only two output devices, the nroff program  produced  text  ori-
       ented  tty  output,  while the troff program generated graphical output
       for exactly one output device, the Wang Graphic Systems CAT typesetter.

       In  1979, Brian Kernighan rewrote troff to support more devices by cre-
       ating an intermediate output format for troff  that  can  be  fed  into
       postprocessor  programs  which  actually do the printout on the device.
       Kernighan's version marks what is known as classical troff  today.   In
       order  to distinguish it from Osanna's original mono-device version, it
       was called ditroff (device independent troff) on some  systems,  though
       this naming isn't mentioned in the classical documentation.

       Today,  any  existing  roff system is based on Kernighan's multi-device
       troff.  The distinction between troff and ditroff isn't  necessary  any
       longer, for each modern troff provides already the complete functional-
       ity of ditroff.  On most systems, the name  troff  is  used  to  denote
       ditroff.

       The  easiest  way  to  use  ditroff is the GNU roff system, groff.  The
       groff(1) program is a wrapper around (di)troff that automatically  han-
       dles postprocessing.


SEE ALSO

       [CSTR #54]
              The  1992  revision  of  the  Nroff/Troff User's Manual by J. F.
              Osanna and Brian Kernighan, see
              Bell Labs CSTR #54 <http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr/
              54.ps.gz>.

       [CSTR #97]
              A  Typesetter-independent TROFF by Brian Kernighan is the origi-
              nal documentation of the first multi-device troff (ditroff), see
              Bell Labs CSTR #97 <http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr/
              97.ps.gz>.

       roff(7)
              This document gives details on the history and concepts of roff.

       troff(1)
              The actual implementation of ditroff.

       groff(1)
              The  GNU  roff  program and pointers to all documentation around
              groff.

       groff_out(5)
              The groff version of the intermediate output language, the basis
              for multi-devicing.


AUTHORS

       Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

       This document is distributed under the terms of the FDL (GNU Free Docu-
       mentation License) version 1.1 or later.  You should  have  received  a
       copy of the FDL on your system, it is also available on-line at the GNU
       copyleft site <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html>.

       This document is part of groff, the  GNU  roff  distribution.   It  was
       written  by  Bernd Warken <bwarken@mayn.de> and is maintained by Werner
       Lemberg <wl@gnu.org>.



Groff Version 1.19.2           February 6, 2006                     DITROFF(7)