[fa.laser-lovers] Text Processor Translators

laser-lovers@uw-beaver (06/05/85)

From: allegra!convex!ctvax!pedz@UW-BEAVER.arpa

We currently have many documents and manuals written with Scribe.  Some
of our customers would prefer to get these items except using a different
text formatter.  Most of them prefer to have them in troff although I
am sure that there will be others who want TeX and prehaps runoff.

Are there any translators between any two of the above processors?  I
would be interested in public domain software or products sold by
other companies.  Also, if you can give any insight into the problem
of trying to write such a translator, I would be interested in hearing
from you.  I'll summarize the responses I get.

Thank you
Perry Smith
pedz@ctvax

p.s.  Thanks to all who answered my type font question.  Now I'm trying
to find a place which carries those books all of you mentioned.

[[Editor's note:  Van Jacobson of LBL wrote a translator from Scribe
to LaTeX which is named s2latex.  It is included on the Unix TeX
distribution tape.  Anyone know about Scribe to troff?	--Rick ]]

laser-lovers@uw-beaver (06/06/85)

From: allegra!packard!harvard!sasaki@UW-BEAVER.arpa (Marty Sasaki)

While this doesn't answer the question of scribe-to-(pick your language)
it might be of interest for someone who is starting out in the documentation
business.

There were several sessions given by the folks who did the documentation
for VMS v4 (and other things as well). They designed a simple language that
is used for formatting their documentation. They then used a pretty simple
macro processor to translate the output to the text formatter of their choice
(either runoff or TeX). This has the advantage of being easy to implement,
flexible, and cheap.

			Marty Sasaki