news@oberon.USC.EDU (USENET News) (04/06/89)
I think I remember reading that someone had a LaTeX style sheet that could produce a UNIX man page, but my recollection is a little hazy. If anyone has such a beast would you please e-mail it to me, or tell me where I can ftp it? Thanks Daniel dwu@castor.usc.edu ================================================================= Daniel Wu ARPA: dwu@castor.usc.edu UUCP: ? dwu@castor.UUCP ? I'm not very familiar with the backbone sites this machine's connected to. Somebody, please send me a diagram of major gateways. =================================================================
dave@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Dave Stuit) (04/16/89)
In article <16344@oberon.USC.EDU> dwu@girtab.usc.edu (Daniel Wu) writes: >I think I remember reading that someone had a LaTeX style sheet that >could produce a UNIX man page, but my recollection is a little hazy. My question for the net: Why typeset UNIX man pages in TeX? UNIX man pages are formatted in *roff format because (1) nroff is universally available (and some variation of troff usually is available on systems with the appropriate output devices), and (2) *roff format allows straight ASCII text (online man pages) and typeset documents (printed man pages) to be produced from the same input file. The whole UNIX online manual facility is built around *roff-formatted pages. -- Dave Stuit dave@jarthur.claremont.edu OR dave@jarthur.uucp OR uunet!jarthur!dave USnail: Platt Campus Center, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
dhosek@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Donald Hosek) (04/17/89)
In article <870@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dave@jarthur.UUCP (Dave Stuit) writes: >In article <16344@oberon.USC.EDU> dwu@girtab.usc.edu (Daniel Wu) writes: >>I think I remember reading that someone had a LaTeX style sheet that >>could produce a UNIX man page, but my recollection is a little hazy. > >My question for the net: Why typeset UNIX man pages in TeX? UNIX man pages >are formatted in *roff format because (1) nroff is universally available >(and some variation of troff usually is available on systems with the >appropriate output devices), and (2) *roff format allows straight ASCII text >(online man pages) and typeset documents (printed man pages) to be produced >from the same input file. The whole UNIX online manual facility is built >around *roff-formatted pages. I think the above-mentioned style is available from Clarkson. What it does is produce printed output (NOT on-line documentation) in a format similar to that used by man pages. Now for Dave's question: why format man pages in TeX? Well suppose one decides to create a set of documentation for one's system (including docs for things like the Beebe DVI drivers and similar type things). Now since the bulk of the documentation is in this n/troff stuff (didn't you see the note which said that it was obsolete? :-)) and you've created man pages for that, you may decide to use the man page format for all your documentation, just so that everything is reasonably consistent. Now, if you were to look into it, the Beebe driver package has some 300-400 pages of documentation in LaTeX format. Converting it would be one heck of a chore. Changing \documentstyle{article} to \documentstyle{manpage} would not (BTW that name was purely conjectural. I don't know anything about the style option myself). Furthermore, while nroff may be pretty universal on Unix systems, it is non-existent elsewhere. On the other hand, TeX is available for any computer more powerful than a Commodore 64 from IBM PC's to Cray super- computers. And usually for free or damned close to it. If you run a multi-system shop (say, Unix and VMS) TeX is a way to allow the documentation to be run off on any of the systems. And if you want to produce on-line docs from TeX (actually a subset of LaTeX) input, there's the Free Software Foundation's TeXinfo project which does a creditable job (or so I hear. I miss out on a lot of stuff being a CMS junkie). -dh
iwm@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Moor) (04/21/89)
In article <870@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dave@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Dave Stuit) writes: > My question for the net: Why typeset UNIX man pages in TeX? UNIX man pages > are formatted in *roff format because (1) nroff is universally available > (and some variation of troff usually is available on systems with the > appropriate output devices), and (2) *roff format allows straight ASCII text > (online man pages) and typeset documents (printed man pages) to be produced > from the same input file. The whole UNIX online manual facility is built > around *roff-formatted pages. nroff is not portable -- you have to have a Unix system, and troff seems tied to certain devices, I know about ditroff, but you have to pay for it. There are three TeX to ascii converters that I know of (dvidoc, dvitty and crudetype), and of course tr2tex to convert your manual pages to TeX :-) -- Ian W Moor UUCP: uunet!mcvax!ukc!icdoc!iwm ARPA: iwm@doc.ic.ac.uk JANET: iwm@uk.ac.ic.doc Department of Computing We don't need no documentation, Imperial College. We don't need no source control, 180 Queensgate No dark sarcasm in the boardroom, London SW7 UK. Manager! leave those programmers alone!
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (04/21/89)
In article <1507@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU> iwm@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Moor) writes: } }There are three TeX to ascii converters that I know of (dvidoc, dvitty and }crudetype), and of course tr2tex to convert your manual pages to TeX :-) Notice though, dvitty doesn't even *try* to produce plausible ascii output. Dvidoc has some brokenness inside it which gets all distances screwed up [and so everything that uses "lengths" come out wrong (such things as the indenting for lists and such) --- I took a fling at figuring out how to fix that, but it was too complicated for me to sort out quickly], and crudetype hasn't shown up anywhere stateside yet, far as I can tell [there was a mention of texhax of its appearing in the archives at cs.washington.edu, but it never arrived]. SO... for all practical purposes, I think there is *NO* useable nroff-like variant of TeX/LaTeX available just yet... __ / ) Bernie Cosell /--< _ __ __ o _ BBN Sys & Tech, Cambridge, MA 02238 /___/_(<_/ (_/) )_(_(<_ cosell@bbn.com
langdon@lll-lcc.UUCP (Bruce Langdon) (04/23/89)
In article <38942@bbn.COM>, cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: > In article <1507@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU> iwm@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Moor) writes: > } > }There are three TeX to ascii converters that I know of (dvidoc, dvitty and > }crudetype), ...... > > ..... Dvidoc has some brokenness inside it which gets all distances > screwed up [and so everything that uses "lengths" come out wrong ... > ..... I took a fling at figuring out how to fix that, but it was too > complicated for me to sort out quickly], ........ SO... for all > practical purposes, I think there is *NO* useable nroff-like variant of > TeX/LaTeX available just yet... Take a look at the example in dvidoc.shar3 before you say that again. I DID take time with it, and I see no evidence that dvidoc itself is broken. But the dvi file you feed it WILL be broken if TeX isn't given values for vertical and horizontal spacings that correspond to monospace reality. Nothing dvidoc can do to repair that later. So I redefined them as needed; see dvidoc.shar3. Dvidoc's output is then fine, for me, so far. This was with plain TeX. We do need a volunteer to make a .sty file to do the same for LaTeX. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Langdon L-472 langdon@lll-lcc.llnl.gov Physics Department 14363%f@nmfecc.llnl.gov Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore, CA 94550 (415) 422-5444 UUCP: ..{qantel,ucdavis,pyramid,harvard,topaz}!lll-lcc!langdon