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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 processing 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 supported only two  output  devices,
       the nroff program produced text oriented tty output, while the troff program generated graphical out-put output
       put for exactly one output device, the Wang Graphic Systems CAT typesetter.

       In 1979, Brian Kernighan rewrote troff to support more devices by  creating  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
       functionality 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 handles 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 original 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 Documentation 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                             3 July 2004                                      DITROFF(7)