pnl@hpfinote.HP.COM (Peter Lim) (05/05/90)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 90 22:51:33 PDT From: raymond@bosco.Berkeley.EDU (Raymond Chen) If you had sent a request to this email server, you would have received the reply below. This has been a recording. Directory PD1:<MSDOS.PRINTER> PCROFF.ARC B 45512 881129 Text formatter like Unix 'roff' PROFF.ARC B 92981 880226 Roff-like printer driver Directory PD1:<MSDOS.TXTUTL> NROSRC.ARC B 23040 870514 Source code for 'nroff' program for MSDOS End of output [Cumulative CPU time: 1.37] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 09:42:35 EDT From: Steve Swales <steve@bat.lle.rochester.edu> we are also looking fo an MS-DOSable nroff and man in the PD. would you please let me know if you get any replies? BTW: if you dont need PD... Mortice Kern Systems, Inc. makes a version of the UNIX nroff/troff command, which, if it's as good as their MKS Toolkit (most UNIX commands) and MKS Make and MKS RCS implementations, is EXCELLENT. I dont know if there is an MKS man or not... but a simple script would do once you had nroff. Also, MKS stuff is quite reasonably priced (for executables only, of course) we will probably get the MKS nroff ourselves, but have no money for it right now. Let me know if you need the address for MKS. thanks. -steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 10:09:38 mdt To: raymond@bosco.berkeley.edu From pnl Thu Apr 19 10:09 MDT 1990 Hi Raymond, > If you had sent a request to this email server, you would have received > the reply below. This has been a recording. > I hope you can further clarify where is 'this email server' located. > Directory PD1:<MSDOS.PRINTER> > PCROFF.ARC B 45512 881129 Text formatter like Unix 'roff' > PROFF.ARC B 92981 880226 Roff-like printer driver > Directory PD1:<MSDOS.TXTUTL> > NROSRC.ARC B 23040 870514 Source code for 'nroff' program for MSDOS > > End of output [Cumulative CPU time: 1.37] > The last item looks sepecially good. The last time I tried, I can't get on to SIMTEL20 (whatever that is, I've never been able to get on). Better still, is it possible for you to request the 3 .ARC's and e-mail them to me ? They don't look too big to me. Is this too much to request ? :-) Hope to hear from you soon one way or another. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 09:15:54 PDT From: raymond@bosco.Berkeley.EDU (Raymond Chen) There are already email servers that will do the dirty work of ftp'ing to SIMTEL20 for you, and emailing you the goodies. The addresses can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions. --rjc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 09:16:39 PDT From: raymond@bosco.Berkeley.EDU (Raymond Chen) Oh, and the "email server" is a little gizmo I have running on my account. It is mentioned in the Frequently Asked Questions file, and I post instructions on how to access it every week to comp.sys.ibm.pc and related newsgroups. --rjc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 10:18:40 mdt To: steve@bat.lle.rochester.edu From pnl Thu Apr 19 10:18 MDT 1990 Hi Steve, > we are also looking fo an MS-DOSable nroff and man in the PD. > would you please let me know if you get any replies? > Just got one reply this morning right before you e-mail. I included the message below. I'm following up on that, hopefully, I'll have full MS-DOS nroff in my lap before long :-). Please go hunting if you like, and keep me informed of any progress. > BTW: if you dont need PD... Mortice Kern Systems, Inc. makes > a version of the UNIX nroff/troff command, which, if it's as good > as their MKS Toolkit (most UNIX commands) and MKS Make and MKS RCS > implementations, is EXCELLENT. I dont know if there is an MKS man > or not... but a simple script would do once you had nroff. Also, > MKS stuff is quite reasonably priced (for executables only, of course) > we will probably get the MKS nroff ourselves, but have no money for it > right now. > The last I looked MKS didn't have "nroff" in their arsenal. By the way, I've heard over and over that RCS is widely available in the PD (source code of course :-)). But to date, I've not even seen one, do you happen to have it or know where I can get it ? As far as possible, I try to assemble my software development system from the PD (or write my own) with source. This free me from being tied to the particular vendor. ..... But you can't always do that :-( .... MS Windows for example ..... sigh ! Well, do keep in touch. Adios. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 15:58:23 EDT From: Steve Swales <steve@bat.lle.rochester.edu> Peter, thanks for the feedback... i must admit that my suggestion that MKS has an 'nroff' command is a rumor (not first hand info), but from a very reliable source. > Just got one reply this morning right before you e-mail. I included > the message below. I'm following up on that, hopefully, I'll have full > MS-DOS nroff in my lap before long if you do, can you let me know how to duplicate the process... i'm not too clear on how to make use of the reply you attached. it seems only to be one side of the conversation... was this the automated reply from an email server? i have (almost) never used email servers (if thats what this is) to get stuff... only ftp, so i'm in the dark about how to follow through. > By the way, > I've heard over and over that RCS is widely available in the PD (source > code of course :-)). But to date, I've not even seen one, do you happen > to have it or know where I can get it ? not off hand. we have been using sccs for a while, but some of us (not me) recently wanted to have one system for both the UNIX machines and DOS, and so we got MKS RCS... unfortunately they're not really 100% compatible because of DOS filename limitations. > As far as possible, I try to assemble my software development system > from the PD (or write my own) with source. This free me from being tied > to the particular vendor. ..... But you can't always do that :-( .... these are my feelings as well... though you have to watch it with PD stuff or you can get in over your head with badly written code. having the source doesn't help much if it's all garbage. thanks again. -steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 14:59:08 mdt To: pnl@hpfipnl.fc.hp.com, raymond@bosco.Berkeley.EDU Hi Raymond, > Oh, and the "email server" is a little gizmo I have running on my account. > It is mentioned in the Frequently Asked Questions file, and I post > instructions > on how to access it every week to comp.sys.ibm.pc and related newsgroups. > --rjc > I just browsed thru' last one month worth of comp.sys.ibm.pc and didn't find any info on how to do the above. Can you please kindly send the info to me ? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 14:04:21 PDT From: raymond@bosco.Berkeley.EDU (Raymond Chen) Okay, I'll send you the FAQ file and the server instructions under separate cover. (I posted the server instructions just Wednesday night.) --rjc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 15:05:47 mdt To: raymond@bosco.Berkeley.EDU Thank you very much. Hope to get MesS-DOS nroff on my disk real soon. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 20:06:19 EST From: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu (Richard Brittain) In article <19760003@hpfinote.HP.COM> you write: >I have been looking around for this. After two years, I still haven't >find it. I NEED TO GET: > > A version of nroff which runs under MS-DOS and can > format UNIX style xxxx.1 man pages. > (Source code preferred, > but I'll take your lousy binary if I must 8-> ) There are good versions of nroff available for some $$$, but if you want free then the only one that comes close is "ro" whose sources were posted to comp. sources.misc a few months ago (I have found and tried 3 other *roff clones but none were much good). As posted, ro had some bugs, and no versions of the "man" macros (not a prayer of running the man macros straight from a unix box) but I cobbled together some man macros that sort of work. If you take any arbitrary man page from unix and ro it, chances are it will be readable but have several mistakes. Working on ro, particularly improving the macro application are on my "maybe some day" list. Write back if you are interested. The macros are short and sources quite large. I can't send diffs because I never bothered to keep the original. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Apr 90 16:31:58 EDT From: sherpa!rac@uunet.UU.NET (Roger Cornelius) Elan has Nroff/PC. Works fine but not PD. Their number is 415-964-2200. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Apr 90 12:15:38 EST From: jsulliva@surf.Prime.COM (Jeff Sullivan) Sorry I can't help, but if you find such a thing, please let me know. HINT: There are some versions on SIMTEL, but I haven't yet found a good one. I'd also like it to include the -me macros. Thanks! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Apr 1990 19:02:35 -0400 From: <sqarc!lee@uunet.uu.net> If you don't mind paying, you could try MKS, who sell at least one version of nroff/troff under MS/DOS. I liked their MKS toolkit, as well. mks are on the net, I think as mks. I'm not sure which nroff they use, although they have SoftQuad's troff, which is how I know about them. It's not very expensive, I think. Elan also have a version of MS/DOS nroff, I believe. Finally, James Clarke (?) has a C++ version of troff which is public domain, but not (I think) nroff. Lee -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 21 Apr 90 01:29:14 -0400 From: Stephen Trier <trier@SCL.CWRU.Edu> If you find an nroff or some sort of man-understanding program, I'd appreciate it if you could either post the answer to the net or e-mail it to me. Thanks! BTW, I solved the "man" command with a quick and dirty hack. I nroff'ed all of my files on one of the VAXstations here, then stuck them in my directory e:\man. Then I wrote man.bat: @echo off less e:\man\%1*.* It's not very fancy, but it does the job. Conceivably, you could add a numeric section option, and perhaps even some sort of -k option with the help of e?grep or something similar. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 21 Apr 90 15:14 GMT From: Dan Resler <RESLERD%ul.ie@hplb.hpl.hp.com> Yes, but it'll cost you real money. We're using a *wonderful* package that I *highly* recommend, especially if you've got a Postscript laser printer. Try MKS's SQPS system (MKS = Mortice Kern Systems; SQPS = SoftQuad Publishing Software). It's essentially just a port from AT&T's UNIX Documenter's WorkBench (DWB) v2.0. Cost, with ps drivers: US$695. Here's their address: MKS Inc., 35 King Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada NJ2 2W9; email: uunet!watmath!mks!inquiry DO NOT even think about getting the equivalent system from Image Network - their MS-DOS port of the DWB is trash... we ordered their's first and had to send it back. At the time we were interested in purchasing an MS-DOS port of the DWB I made extensive enquiries as to whether a cheap or public domain version existed. No such luck ... AT&T requires a stiff license fee which keeps the cost up. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pnl@hpfinote.HP.COM (Peter Lim) (05/05/90)
For the benefit of the netlanders at large, Re: Hunt for text formatter to handle UNIX man pages. ------------------------------------------------- The conclusion ? I've sent away to a few SIMTEL20 sites and got all the following packages (PROFF.ARC was from an internal HP site) after being bounced around a few times. > Directory PD:<MSDOS.PRINTER> > PCROFF.ARC B 45512 881129 Text formatter like Unix 'roff' > PROFF.ARC B 92981 880226 Roff-like printer driver > Directory PD:<MSDOS.TXTUTL> > NROSRC.ARC B 23040 870514 Source code for 'nroff' program for MSDOS > PCROFF is directed at printers and doesn't support laserjet anyway, so it is quite useless for me. Remember that I'm after something that handles UNIX style man pages and not a text formatter in general. NROSRC contains NRO which is a very ancient version of NROFF; it does come with the "man" macro but is rather limited. It doesn't handle the backslash commands (ie. \fB) which abound in modern UNIX man pages. From the few man pages I tried, there are quite a few macros not defined (I suppose I can go ahead and define them, if at all possible). The source is fairly structured and nice, but the code handling is hard coded which makes changes a little harder. I felt that it should be possible to hack the backslash command handling into the code; but there's no guarantee and I've to find time to do that. PROFF is like a partial superset of NRO. Some commands are missing but there are quite a lot of extension. Would do well if you want a text formatter inferior to troff. I didn't look at the source code in detail, but a glance impressed upon me that it would be harder to hack this code than to hack NROSRC. ------------------------------------------------- All in all, I was not able to find a package that will handle modern UNIX man pages so far. I hope someone can give me some clue on where to look for more up to date version of either NRO or PROFF. Short of that, I'll have to hack NRO into doing the job; when will that be done is anybody's guess. =============================================================================== Just after I wrote the above, someone pointed out that I can get hold of NROFF from a MINIX source archive. I seem to have mis-placed the mail somewhere. Anyway, the general idea is send the following lines to "listserv@vm1.nodak.edu": get pc-upd 150-65 minix get pc-upd 150-66 minix I did and received the NROFF package. I tried it and apparently this is a more up to date version of the NRO package I mentioned above. Somewhere in the source code mentioned that it has been 'heavily hacked to handle more modern man pages format'. It seems much better than NRO, but still missing quite a few macros. I tried to create these macros. Got some done, but I still can't get .RS .RE .TP to work properly. I believe, this has something to do with the limited 'variable handling' capability of the package (ie. in \nX, X can only be [a-zA-Z]). Anybody know of an even more up to date version ? or want to create these macro / hack the source code ? Go ahead, I think I've spent more than enough time on this for now. Regards, ## Life is fast enough as it is ........ Peter Lim. ## .... DON'T PUSH IT !! >>>-------, ########################################### : E-mail: plim@hpsgwg.HP.COM Snail-mail: Hewlett Packard Singapore, : Tel: (065)-279-2289 (ICDS, ICS) | Telnet: 520-2289 1150 Depot Road, __\@/__ ... also at: pnl@hpfipnl.HP.COM Singapore 0410. SPLAT !