zender@cfa250.harvard.edu (Charlie Zender) (09/19/90)
I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone at a site that is running AT&T's Documentor's Workbench on the Sun OS. We received a copy of version 2.0 on mag tape with two red binders and very poor, misleading, unworking documentation. About half of the make files had to be edited, along with some source code just to get the thing compiled on our sparcstation. Now that its compiled, it doesn't produce ditroff output!!! Suggestions? ********************************************************************** Charlie Zender zender@cfa.harvard.edu Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory zender@xdl1.harvard.edu 60 Garden Street Cambridge MA 02138 617-495-7381 Disklamer: all is misspelled **********************************************************************
sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) (09/19/90)
In article <2047@cfa209.cfa250.harvard.edu> zender@cfa250.harvard.edu (Charlie Zender) writes: >I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone at a site that is >running AT&T's Documentor's Workbench on the Sun OS. We received a >copy of version 2.0 on mag tape with two red binders and very poor, >misleading, unworking documentation. About half of the make files had >to be edited, along with some source code just to get the thing >compiled on our sparcstation. Now that its compiled, it doesn't >produce ditroff output!!! >Suggestions? Sounds familiar. DWB Release 2.0 is several years old, and AT&T haven't bothered to develop it up to production quality. When I asked their European subsidiary about a newer release, they said that no such thing is coming and recommended the QuadSoft product. There are other good products available that are based on DWB, at least that from Elan. I hope you didn't have to pay very much. When I put up DWB 2.0 on a Sun 3 once upon a time, the problems were not as great as you describe, although certainly there was a lot of work and problems. The Sparc may cause some part of them. In any case, the first necessity is to put up the System V environment in SunOS as completely as possible. Did you do that? Markku Sakkinen Department of Computer Science and Information Systems University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts) Seminaarinkatu 15 SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again) Finland SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative network address)
jaap@mtxinu.COM (Jaap Akkerhuis) (09/20/90)
In article <1990Sep19.122319.26279@tukki.jyu.fi> sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) writes: > In article <2047@cfa209.cfa250.harvard.edu> zender@cfa250.harvard.edu (Charlie Zender) writes: > >I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone at a site that is > >running AT&T's Documentor's Workbench on the Sun OS. We received a > >copy of version 2.0 on mag tape with two red binders and very poor, > >misleading, unworking documentation. About half of the make files had > >to be edited, along with some source code just to get the thing > >compiled on our sparcstation. Now that its compiled, it doesn't > >produce ditroff output!!! > >Suggestions? > > Sounds familiar. DWB Release 2.0 is several years old, > and AT&T haven't bothered to develop it up to production quality. > When I asked their European subsidiary about a newer release, > they said that no such thing is coming and recommended the QuadSoft product. Yep 2.0 is old and outdated, it predates the sparc machines and won't run properly on these type of machines, basically due to problems with variable arguments etc. Apparently 3.0 came out some months ago and that will run without any problem. jaap
jkoval@hari.uwo.ca (John Koval) (09/20/90)
In article <1990Sep19.122319.26279@tukki.jyu.fi> sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) writes: >In article <2047@cfa209.cfa250.harvard.edu> zender@cfa250.harvard.edu (Charlie Zender) writes: >>I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone at a site that is >>running AT&T's Documentor's Workbench on the Sun OS. We received a >>copy of version 2.0 on mag tape with two red binders and very poor, >>misleading, unworking documentation. About half of the make files had >>to be edited, along with some source code just to get the thing >>compiled on our sparcstation. Now that its compiled, it doesn't >>produce ditroff output!!! > >Sounds familiar. DWB Release 2.0 is several years old, >and AT&T haven't bothered to develop it up to production quality. >When I asked their European subsidiary about a newer release, >they said that no such thing is coming and recommended the QuadSoft product. >There are other good products available that are based on DWB, >at least that from Elan. I hope you didn't have to pay very much. > I have struggled with DWB Release 1.0, and was hoping that Release 2.0 was better. Moreover costs are high, $1500 (educational) for first copy of DWB 2.0, and $2000 for DWB 3.1 (quote from Bill Murphy at Unix Systems International (?) in New Jersey). These are comparable to prices quoted by commercial sources (SoftQuad in Toronto, and Elan in ???). I wonder if commercial version are better. John Koval Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics University of Western Ontario London Ontario Canada N5A 5C1 (519-)661-2162 jkoval@biostats.uwo.ca jkoval@uwovax.bitnet -- John Koval Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics University of Western Ontario London Ontario Canada N5A 5C1 (519-)661-2162 jkoval@biostats.uwo.ca jkoval@uwovax.bitnet
lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) (09/21/90)
sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) writes: >In article <2047@cfa209.cfa250.harvard.edu> zender@cfa250.harvard.edu (Charlie Zender) writes: >>I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone at a site that is >>running AT&T's Documentor's Workbench on the Sun OS. >Sounds familiar. DWB Release 2.0 is several years old, >and AT&T haven't bothered to develop it up to production quality. >When I asked their European subsidiary about a newer release, >they said that no such thing is coming and recommended the QuadSoft product. Actually, it's SoftQuad ... I have a set of patches to get DWB 2.0 running on Sparc machines. Send mail if you're interested. -- Lyndon Nerenberg VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University {alberta,cbmvax,mips}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca The only thing open about OSF is their mouth. --Chuck Musciano
mf@ircam.ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut) (09/23/90)
We ported ditroff, tbl, pic, eqn, to Suns and DECstations 3100. The effort was 1 man/week, essentially, and was prompted by the outrageous prices some companies charge for it. Michael
jkoval@hari.uwo.ca (John Koval) (09/25/90)
In article <1990Sep23.001920.23329@ircam.ircam.fr> mf@ircam.ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut) writes: >We ported ditroff, tbl, pic, eqn, to Suns and DECstations 3100. >The effort was 1 man/week, essentially, and was prompted by >the outrageous prices some companies charge for it. > The prices are definitely outrageous. We have been quoted $2000 for a copy for one machine by both Unix Software International (AT&T's international sales office) and SoftQuad. I don't think Elan's will be much cheaper. This makes Framemaker seem really cheap ($600-$1000). -- John Koval Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics University of Western Ontario London Ontario Canada N5A 5C1 (519-)661-2162 jkoval@biostats.uwo.ca jkoval@uwovax.bitnet
npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) (09/26/90)
Although the official AT&T version of Documenter's WorkBench has been the ancient DWB 2.0, inside Bell Labs we have been using more modern versions, as described in several of Brian Kernighan's papers. This latest version of troff has been incorporated into DWB 3.1, now available from UNIX System Laboratories, and their European and Pacific affiliates. DWB 3.1 also includes excellent PostScript support, especially for picture inclusion (e.g., PC-generated PostScript). Other major differences are: a new drawing program called Picasso, based on pic but featuring color, gray-scale, rotation, scaling and other goodies. A batch (pic-like) version is in DWB 3.1, but you can also get an X Window version (WYSIWYG drawing for troff users, at last!). New troff uses readable ascii font descriptions rather than the old ".OUT" binaries. There was some griping about price in several articles. DWB is sold by USL as *source*. That's why it's expensive. We are counting on vendors and VARs buying the source license, then reselling binary at a reasonable price. So far, we have been able to compile one set of source for troff, eqn, tbl, pic, picasso etc for Amdahl UTS, AT&T 6386 and 3B2, Sun 3, Sun 4, VAX 86xx and Pyramid. To the best of our ability, the code is fully portable and should require no extra effort. I would advise anyone who has the older version to upgrade to DWB 3.1. It's supported, it's reliable (used by thousands of internal AT&T people), it has a future.
seeger@thedon.cis.ufl.edu (F. L. Charles Seeger III) (09/26/90)
In article <1990Sep25.184555.10631@cbnewsl.att.com> npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes: | | ... DWB 3.1, now available ... | | There was some griping about price in several articles. | DWB is sold by USL as *source*. That's why it's expensive. Sounds great. Is there a special educational program/discount? -- Charles Seeger E301 CSE Building Office: +1 904 392 1508 CIS Department University of Florida Fax: +1 904 392 1220 seeger@ufl.edu Gainesville, FL 32611-2024
rstevens@pluto.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Rich Stevens) (09/26/90)
> We are counting on vendors and VARs buying the source license, > then reselling binary at a reasonable price. OK, I'm game. DWB 3.1 has been available for over 2 months. Tell me one VAR who has it available (2 months should be ample time for a product that's easily portable). OK, tell me one VAR who *plans* to make it available (Elan has told me they don't, and I'd bet SoftQuad doesn't either). OK, tell me one VAR who plans to make it available at a *reasonable price*. I have a single user SPARC SLC and refuse to pay one-fourth the cost of the system just for this. I'd love to get DWB 3.1 (binary) and would send a check off today ... Richard Stevens
morrell@hpcuhb.HP.COM (Michael Morrell) (09/29/90)
/comp.text / npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) / 11:45 am Sep 25, 1990/ Although the official AT&T version of Documenter's WorkBench has been the ancient DWB 2.0, inside Bell Labs we have been using more modern versions, as described in several of Brian Kernighan's papers. This latest version of troff has been incorporated into DWB 3.1, now available from UNIX System Laboratories, and their European and Pacific affiliates. [ some description of features deleted ] ---------- This sounds great. Do you have a complete list of features/bug fixes that 3.1 provides over 2.0? Michael
sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) (10/01/90)
In article <1990Sep25.184555.10631@cbnewsl.att.com> npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes: > [useful information deleted] > ... >I would advise anyone who has the older version to upgrade >to DWB 3.1. It's supported, it's reliable (used by >thousands of internal AT&T people), it has a future. BTW, what is its device-independent output format: - original ditroff (rather stupid, inefficient, and unreadable), - a la SoftQuad (much more sensible, but of course totally incompatible), - something else? Markku Sakkinen Department of Computer Science and Information Systems University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts) Seminaarinkatu 15 SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again) Finland SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative network address)