troff
Shares rank 7 of 12 typesetting systems by recommenders
Already installed on many systems and powerful for typesetting; critics say it is dated and not ideal for top-quality typesetting.
Already installed on many systems and powerful for typesetting; critics say it is dated and not ideal for top-quality typesetting.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Already installed on many systems
“I feel like a lot of people don't know about the power of the roff suites and that it is installed by default on a lot of systems.”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers” “LaTeX was not going to fit on my extremely space-constrained Linux machine but troff was already there.”
Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “Novellas with Groff” Powerful roff suite for typesetting
“I feel like a lot of people don't know about the power of the roff suites and that it is installed by default on a lot of systems.”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers” “To appreciate troff, nroff and the whole runoff family”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Learning Sed or Using Claude?”
Other typesetting systems people recommend
The four most recommended other typesetting systems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 12 typesetting systems, rankedWhat people said
8 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“troff is no longer fashionable, and it's not what you want for top-quality typesetting”
“LaTeX was not going to fit on my extremely space-constrained Linux machine but troff was already there.”
“To appreciate troff, nroff and the whole runoff family”
“even indexes with troff was easier”
“I feel like a lot of people don't know about the power of the roff suites and that it is installed by default on a lot of systems.”
“Even if it's heavily into troff”
“the closest way to have an actual (hyper)link in a manpage is to use your pager's”
“Worst would be something like Troff or jira formatting”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.