No, not as such - it's similar to reading a pot on a PIC without an ADC - you charge a capacitor and measure how long it takes to do so. In this case you're actually wanting timed pulses, so no 'measuring' involved, just the outputting of each pulse in turn. I recall a similar chip been used a number of decades ago in a magazine project for an RC system.
So it's essentially a simple ADC, created by waiting for a capacitor to charge to the switching threshold of the chip - so using LS or HC versions 'might' not work, as they probably have different threshold voltages?.