ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) (11/14/90)
lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes: > By the way, does anyone have a compiled copy of groff for Sun3 or Sun4 (4.1) > or even Vax or Pyramid? I've spent hours trying to get it to compile and > run, and don't have any more time to piddle with it. It would make me > Very Happy if there was somewhere I could ftp a runnable copy. You'll > never guess what I want to groff a copy of... I'm not sure that groff is really ready for that kind of use yet. Personally, I'm sticking to old troff (no, I lie, *ancient* troff :-) with Chris Lewis's "psroff" package which translates the CAT output to postscript, laserjet or ditroff output. That package really is production quality. In the long term, groff will probably become more important, as I don't have pic. But for straighforward tbl | eqn | troff -mm, psroff is easy to compile, install, and use, is well tested, and doesn't require a C++ compiler. Question: anyone know if groff has been fixed to handle -mm yet ? -- ronald@robobar.co.uk +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)
rstevens@noao.edu (Rich Stevens) (11/14/90)
In article <1990Nov14.094039.11153@robobar.co.uk> ronald@robobar.co.uk writes: > >I'm not sure that groff is really ready for that kind of use yet. It is. groff-0.6 is an *impressive* package. I've found it far more reliable than DWB 2.0. The few discrepancies that I have found have been responded to and fixed by the author within 24 hours. I have run hundreds of complicated pages through it (mainly pic and gtroff; very little eqn). I use it with -ms, so I don't know about the problems with -mm. groff has most of the new features from DWB 3.1 (shaded boxes in pic, variable line width in pic, etc...) plus some features that I don't think are in DWB 3.1 (kerning, far better hyphenation, etc.). It did take me about a day to bring it up (along with all the necessary tools (g++, gcc, bison, etc.) on a SPARC running SunOS 4.1. The downside is that I now have to learn C++ to modify it :-) Rich Stevens
jjc@jclark.UUCP (James Clark) (11/15/90)
Question: anyone know if groff has been fixed to handle -mm yet ? The penultimate paragraph in the file `INSTALL' in the groff distribution explains how to make groff and -mm work together. James Clark jjc@jclark.uucp jjc@ai.mit.edu
lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) (11/15/90)
I said:
: > By the way, does anyone have a compiled copy of groff for Sun3 or Sun4 (4.1)
: > or even Vax or Pyramid? I've spent hours trying to get it to compile and
: > run, and don't have any more time to piddle with it. It would make me
: > Very Happy if there was somewhere I could ftp a runnable copy.
I got one, you can stop offering now...thanks...
In article <1990Nov14.094039.11153@robobar.co.uk> ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) writes:
: I'm not sure that groff is really ready for that kind of use yet.
: Personally, I'm sticking to old troff (no, I lie, *ancient* troff :-)
: with Chris Lewis's "psroff" package which translates the CAT output
: to postscript, laserjet or ditroff output. That package really is
: production quality.
But ancient troff still has the 3 1/2 font limit, which is the primary
reason I wanted groff. I don't suppose psroff has a way around that?
: In the long term, groff will probably become more important, as
: I don't have pic. But for straighforward tbl | eqn | troff -mm,
: psroff is easy to compile, install, and use, is well tested, and
: doesn't require a C++ compiler.
groff 0.6 seemed to work okay for me, though gtbl didn't like me to
say font 3 instead of font B.
: Question: anyone know if groff has been fixed to handle -mm yet ?
Dunno.
Larryronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) (11/15/90)
lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes: > But ancient troff still has the 3 1/2 font limit, which is the primary > reason I wanted groff. I don't suppose psroff has a way around that? Well, you have to issue .fp requests to make them fit in the 4 fonts, but yes it all does come out correctly -- I get to use all the fonts in my Postscript cartridge. Wrapped up in macros, you'd never notice the extra .fp's anyway. psroff has a hack to push the .fp out to the backend so it knows to change fonts. > groff 0.6 seemed to work okay for me, though gtbl didn't like me to > say font 3 instead of font B. >: Question: anyone know if groff has been fixed to handle -mm yet ? > > Dunno. As James says, there are instructions to *make* it work. This sort of rough edge is basically what makes psroff "production" and groff "state of the art, but beta" in my estimation. Oh well. Please don't read me as putting groff down, I'm not. It's just that psroff is slick and works *easily*. I have both on this machine, and I tend to use psroff. Probably because I don't often need pic. -- ronald@robobar.co.uk +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)
clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) (11/17/90)
In article <10375@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes: >In article <1990Nov14.094039.11153@robobar.co.uk> ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) writes: >: I'm not sure that groff is really ready for that kind of use yet. >: Personally, I'm sticking to old troff (no, I lie, *ancient* troff :-) >: with Chris Lewis's "psroff" package which translates the CAT output >: to postscript, laserjet or ditroff output. That package really is >: production quality. >But ancient troff still has the 3 1/2 font limit, which is the primary >reason I wanted groff. I don't suppose psroff has a way around that? Do you mean 3 1/2 fonts maximum simultaneous or 3 1/2 fonts maximum period? Neither CAT troff or psroff have the 2nd limit, and I've never had much trouble with the former. Though, I suppose I could circumvent it somehow. DWB style troffs do have a more flexible method of adding characters, but you can get around that limitation with old troff with psroff. -- Chris Lewis, Phone: TBA UUCP: uunet!utai!lsuc!ecicrl!clewis Moderator of the Ferret Mailing List (ferret-request@eci386) Psroff mailing list (psroff-request@eci386)
clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) (11/17/90)
In article <1990Nov15.103411.22444@robobar.co.uk> ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) writes: >Oh well. Please don't read me as putting groff down, I'm not. It's >just that psroff is slick and works *easily*. I have both on this >machine, and I tend to use psroff. Probably because I don't often >need pic. Pic's coming - I have it sorta working already if you're at psroff 2 PL3 (see catconv). -- Chris Lewis, Phone: TBA UUCP: uunet!utai!lsuc!ecicrl!clewis Moderator of the Ferret Mailing List (ferret-request@eci386) Psroff mailing list (psroff-request@eci386)
ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) (11/19/90)
In article <937@ecicrl.UUCP> clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes: > Pic's coming - I have it sorta working already if you're at psroff 2 > PL3 (see catconv). Er, surely you actually need /usr/bin/pic as well as catconv ? I don't *have* /usr/bin/pic. (Larry, look! catconv's written in PERL!!) -- ronald@robobar.co.uk +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)
clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) (11/23/90)
In article <1990Nov18.193614.19500@robobar.co.uk> ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) writes: >In article <937@ecicrl.UUCP> clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes: >> Pic's coming - I have it sorta working already if you're at psroff 2 >> PL3 (see catconv). >Er, surely you actually need /usr/bin/pic as well as catconv ? >I don't *have* /usr/bin/pic. Coming in the sense that you can print PIC output and have more complete ditroff emulation. Coming also in the sense that I've heard rumors of a version of PIC written in AWK that appeared in some book someplace. Can someone, somewhere PLEASE tell me where? Or, better still, e-mail me the awk code? >(Larry, look! catconv's written in PERL!!) Yup! You should see the other stuff in there written in Perl! -- Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541 UUCP: uunet!utai!lsuc!ecicrl!clewis Moderator of the Ferret Mailing List (ferret-request@eci386) Psroff mailing list (psroff-request@eci386)
ron@mlfarm.com (Ronald Florence) (01/31/91)
Some weeks ago, i386 binaries of groff version 0.4, were posted to comp.unix.sysv386. Unfortunately, those binaries do not work with the mm macros. When I reported the error, James Clark <jclark!jjc>, the author of groff, wrote: > I can't reproduce the problem either using the current version of > troff or using version 0.4. [...] > The only explanation I can think of is that your gtroff binary is > broken: perhaps it was compiled with an old and buggy version of g++. I have also tried Esix binaries of groff 1.0 which were offered by a generous net reader: they dump core under Xenix. Those of us who do not have room to bring up g++ and groff could still use a working Xenix binary of groff, preferably a more recent version. Perhaps someone would like to earn the eternal gratitude of me and others by making Xenix binaries of groff 1.0 available via anonymous uucp and/or ftp. Thanks. -- Ronald Florence ron@mlfarm.com