npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) (11/29/90)
A poster asked the origins of the troff in System V release 4. It's an ancient Berkeley version; in fact, I think Bill Joy ported it himself. It's in the BSD compatibility directory. Works great if you have an APS phototypesetter.
wnp@iiasa.ac.at (Wolf PAUL ) (11/30/90)
In article <1990Nov29.154821.1709@cbnewsl.att.com> npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes:
)A poster asked the origins of the troff in System V
)release 4. It's an ancient Berkeley version; in fact,
)I think Bill Joy ported it himself. It's in the BSD
)compatibility directory. Works great if you have an
)APS phototypesetter.
Actually, it probably expects a C/A/T.
But don't despair: That is exactly what PSROFF, recently posted
to alt.sources, is for: to convert that C/A/T output to either
ditroff output format, HP PCL, or Postscript.
--
W.N.Paul, Int. Institute f. Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361 Laxenburg--Austria
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HOME: +43-2236-618514 BITNET: tuvie!iiasa!wnp@awiuni01.BITNETilan343@violet.berkeley.edu (Geraldo Veiga) (12/01/90)
In article <977@iiasa.UUCP> wnp%iiasa@relay.eu.net (Wolf PAUL ) writes: >In article <1990Nov29.154821.1709@cbnewsl.att.com> npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes: >)A poster asked the origins of the troff in System V >)release 4. It's an ancient Berkeley version; in fact, >)I think Bill Joy ported it himself. It's in the BSD >)compatibility directory. Works great if you have an >)APS phototypesetter. > >Actually, it probably expects a C/A/T. > >But don't despair: That is exactly what PSROFF, recently posted If you hope for a "standard" troff, there's every reason to despair. DWB 2.0 didn't make it as a standard because all BSD machines had the old troff built-in. Now even System V systems will have it too. Well, at least the problem of maintaining and printing manual pages is solved, and PSROFF adds support to everyday printers. Geraldo
clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) (12/09/90)
In article <1990Dec1.015152.25128@agate.berkeley.edu> ilan343@violet.berkeley.edu (Geraldo Veiga) writes: |In article <977@iiasa.UUCP> wnp%iiasa@relay.eu.net (Wolf PAUL ) writes: |>In article <1990Nov29.154821.1709@cbnewsl.att.com> npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes: |>)A poster asked the origins of the troff in System V |>)release 4. It's an ancient Berkeley version; in fact, |>)I think Bill Joy ported it himself. It's in the BSD |>)compatibility directory. Works great if you have an |>)APS phototypesetter. |>Actually, it probably expects a C/A/T. |>But don't despair: That is exactly what PSROFF, recently posted |If you hope for a "standard" troff, there's every reason to despair. |DWB 2.0 didn't make it as a standard because all BSD machines had the |old troff built-in. Now even System V systems will have it too. |Well, at least the problem of maintaining and printing manual pages is |solved, and PSROFF adds support to everyday printers. Well, actually, you could consider CAT troff to be the standard troff, and DWB 2 & 3 to be minor aberrations... Which is most unfortunate. Most versions of UNIX that come with any sort of text processing stuff, such as nroff, also come with CAT troff unless somebody noticed that there was no way to use or test it with "modern" popular printers (eg: Postscript or Laserjets) and left it out. It is fortunate that many vendors didn't notice that (even on some AT&T releases), because Psroff (and a few others) came along and you could actually use it. You can even drive a DMD's xproof on-screen previewer with psroff using otroff on a 3b2. T'would be nice if AT&T released troff into PD (or redistributable copyrighted) then those people who's vendors did notice and dropped it could get a troff. Without paying an arm and a leg, or simply being unable to get ANYTHING at all. CAT troff with psroff is production quality output, though, of course, true ditroff is better because of some of the additional features. The most important perhaps being the extensible character set. I can emulate in psroff most of the important unique-to-ditroff facilities, but many of them are still a bit buggy. -- 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)