troff
E662019
troff is a classic Unix text formatting and typesetting program used to produce high-quality printed documents from plain text source files.
All labels observed (2)
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T7393905 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: troff Context triple: [Unix Text Processing, relatedTo, troff]
-
A.
METAFONT
METAFONT is a font description and rasterization system created by Donald Knuth for designing and generating bitmap fonts, particularly for use with the TeX typesetting system.
-
B.
The METAFONTbook
The METAFONTbook is Donald Knuth’s comprehensive manual and reference guide to the METAFONT system for designing and programming digital typefaces.
-
C.
PostScript
PostScript is a page description and programming language widely used in desktop publishing and printing to precisely define the layout and appearance of text and graphics.
-
D.
The TeXbook
The TeXbook is Donald Knuth’s authoritative manual and tutorial on the TeX typesetting system, widely regarded as the definitive reference for learning and using TeX.
-
E.
upTeX
upTeX is a Japanese-enabled TeX engine that extends pTeX with full Unicode support for typesetting multilingual documents, especially those containing Japanese text.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: troff Target entity description: troff is a classic Unix text formatting and typesetting program used to produce high-quality printed documents from plain text source files.
-
A.
METAFONT
METAFONT is a font description and rasterization system created by Donald Knuth for designing and generating bitmap fonts, particularly for use with the TeX typesetting system.
-
B.
The METAFONTbook
The METAFONTbook is Donald Knuth’s comprehensive manual and reference guide to the METAFONT system for designing and programming digital typefaces.
-
C.
PostScript
PostScript is a page description and programming language widely used in desktop publishing and printing to precisely define the layout and appearance of text and graphics.
-
D.
The TeXbook
The TeXbook is Donald Knuth’s authoritative manual and tutorial on the TeX typesetting system, widely regarded as the definitive reference for learning and using TeX.
-
E.
upTeX
upTeX is a Japanese-enabled TeX engine that extends pTeX with full Unicode support for typesetting multilingual documents, especially those containing Japanese text.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (46)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
Unix software
ⓘ
text formatting program ⓘ typesetting system ⓘ |
| developer |
Bell Labs
ⓘ
linked to:
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Brian W. Kernighan ⓘ
linked to:
Brian Kernighan
Joseph F. Ossanna ⓘ |
| distribution | included with traditional Unix systems ⓘ |
| era | early Unix era ⓘ |
| feature |
conditional processing
ⓘ
diagram support (via pic) ⓘ equation formatting (via eqn) ⓘ font selection ⓘ line-oriented markup ⓘ macro definitions ⓘ number registers ⓘ page layout control ⓘ string variables ⓘ table formatting (via tbl) ⓘ |
| genre |
document processor
ⓘ
typesetting software ⓘ |
| influenced |
groff
ⓘ
modern text processing systems ⓘ |
| inputFormat | plain text source files ⓘ |
| inspiredBy | RUNOFF ⓘ |
| license | various Unix licenses (historically proprietary) ⓘ |
| notableMacroPackage |
-man
ⓘ
-mdoc ⓘ -me ⓘ -mm ⓘ -ms ⓘ |
| notableUser |
AT&T Bell Labs
ⓘ
linked to:
Bell Telephone Laboratories
|
| operatingSystem | Unix ⓘ |
| partOf | Unix document processing tools ⓘ |
| predecessor |
roff
ⓘ
linked to:
nroff
|
| programmingLanguage | C ⓘ |
| relatedSoftware |
groff
ⓘ
linked to:
Groff
nroff ⓘ |
| supportsOutput |
PDF (via later tools)
ⓘ
PostScript ⓘ typeset documents ⓘ |
| usedFor |
articles
ⓘ
books ⓘ manual pages ⓘ technical documentation ⓘ |
| uses |
macro packages
ⓘ
markup language ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: troff Description of subject: troff is a classic Unix text formatting and typesetting program used to produce high-quality printed documents from plain text source files.
Referenced by (5)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.