 SoftQuad started its life in 1984 as a technology-oriented spin-off of Toronto's Coach House Press.Its founders were Yuri Rubinsky, David Slocombe and Stan Bevington.SoftQuad was started in order to improve automated typesetting at Toronto's Coach House Press, and for many years developed an enhanced commercial version of the text formatting program troff, developed under license from AT&T, called sqtroff.