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Old 9th November 2008
DrJ DrJ is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2008
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I'll not let facts get in the way of healthy speculation, but I would guess that Knuth simply got interested in text processing and thought he could improve the state-of-the-art. Academics are free to do that -- there need be no real "reason". That troff was closed at the time was likely a motivation.
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