jmr@motown.UUCP (John M. Ritter) (09/17/86)
> In article <6902@ki4pv.UUCP> tanner@ki4pv.UUCP (who else) writes: > >The reason that our customers have gone to "lyrix" instead of using > >what we use for \fBall\fR of our document preparation is simple: > >our customers need to print form letters &c. to their customers. > > > >There appears to be no easy or clean way to merge data into nroff -- > >the data would have to be prepared with extra new-lines, and as for > >iterating to print a hundred copies -- looks like it would be hairy. > > Funny, I whipped off a little shell script to do just that today. > Something like this (typed from memory, it was on a different system, > so I may have dropped a backslash or a quote somewhere): > Even funnier: I always thought that all of this nonsense was built right into nroff/troff by using the `.rd' request to accept standard input from the keyboard, a file, or a pipe. You also eliminate an invocation of [nt]roff for *each* letter you want to send. At least if it *doesn't* work, I don't understand how all of my correspondence has been working! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I enjoy working with human beings, and John M. Ritter have stimulating relationships with them." Allied-Signal Inc. - HAL 9000 Corporate Tax Department {bellcore,harpo,ihnp4,infopro,princeton,sys1}!motown!jmr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------