boydn@citylite.UUCP (Boyd M. Naron) (03/13/91)
Hello fellow netters, I've been running under a handicap for some time now and I'm hoping that someone out there will be able to assist. I am the System Administrator for a 4 CPU Unix system. We run a rather tainted version of System-V on 4 UNISYS 5000/95s. My problem is this: When we purchased these systems, we did not also purchase the Documentor's Workbench which includes TROFF. Now after a couple of years, I'm finding that this was a major mistake, since I have been collecting and using many of the more useful system utilities found on usenet. Unfortunately, with almost no exception, the documentation provided with these utilities are TROFF files and need to be run through TROFF in order to reformat them into something readable. Alas, we are now without sufficient funds in which to purchase Troff so I am forced to look to the NET to find something that will do the job. If you know where I could find a TROFF clone of sorts, please E-Mail me a note to 'citylite!boydn@sachtoh0.sac.ca.us'. Any assistance would be of major help. Thank you.... Boyd M. Naron BBS: The City Lights PCBoard UUCP: pacbell!sactoh0!citylite!boydn Telephone: 1-916-427-0324 InterNet: citylite!boydn@sactoh0.sac.ca.us FidoNet: [1:203/24]
walter@hpsadle.HP.COM (Walter Coole) (03/29/91)
The Free Software Foundation distributes groff, which takes troff input, but you'll need a dvi driver for your printer. You probably could get what you need by using nroff (which nearly every U**X distribution includes) on your troff documents, they won't look as pretty, but they should be mostly readable. NOT AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT.
ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) (04/08/91)
walter@hpsadle.HP.COM (Walter Coole) writes: > The Free Software Foundation distributes groff, which takes troff > input, but you'll need a dvi driver for your printer. groff also produces PostScript[TM] output directly (I don't have the original query so I don't know what the question was :-) as well as producing typewriter "nroff-style" output. It's a good quality product, if a little slow. The real problem for some is that it's written in C++ 2.0, so you need cfront 2.0 or g++ to compile it. However, it was definitely worth installing g++ (which is also free) for. I do sometimes use it with a DVI driver, because it's quicker on my HP Laserjet II, compared to PostScript with the Pacific Page cartridge, which is desperately slow. The DVI driver I use for HP Laserjet II was found in: nestroy.wu-wien.ac.at:/pub/src/Typeset/dvi2xx/ [137.208.3.4] (Thanks Ed V!) but unfortunately it doesn't do tpic specials, so groff's pic stuff doesn't work. Does anyone know of a free HPLJII DVI driver that does tpic version 2 specials ? -- Ronald Khoo <ronald@robobar.co.uk> +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)