crockett@top.cis.syr.edu (Peter Crockett) (01/14/89)
A professor came here with some troff source which uses a troff preprocessor called pic. He had the code for pic sent here, but it generates a troff directive D which is not understood by any troff on campus. Anyone know anything about pic and/or the nature of this mysterious directive? Peter Crockett
jw@daedalus (Pegasystems) (01/14/89)
In article <1000@cmx.npac.syr.edu> crockett@top.cis.syr.edu (Peter Crockett) writes: >A professor came here with some troff source which uses a troff >preprocessor called pic. He had the code for pic sent here, but it >generates a troff directive D which is not understood by any troff on >campus. Anyone know anything about pic and/or the nature of this >mysterious directive? > the \D troff command belongs to ditroff and will not work with nroff or troff if the troff is the old troff often distributed with systems. however there is a command line argument to pic to use the old \L and \l commands but this has only limited useability. The \D commands are much more versital in how they draw lines, using the printing device's native drawing facility rather than drawing with \(ru an\(br (ruling underline and vertical bar). This means that the \D enables the drawing of circles, elipses and splines (wiggly lines) if the printer is capable of it (often if a printer is not capable of it the post-processor will overcome this limitation). =============================================================================== J.W. : Pegasystems :...!{ucbvax,uunet}!daedalus.ucsf.edu!jw Schultz : 415-838-5574 : jw@daedalus.ucsf.edu : : JW@UCSFCCA.BITNET ===============================================================================
debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra) (01/15/89)
In article <1000@cmx.npac.syr.edu> crockett@top.cis.syr.edu (Peter Crockett) writes: >A professor came here with some troff source which uses a troff >preprocessor called pic. He had the code for pic sent here, but it >generates a troff directive D which is not understood by any troff on >campus. Anyone know anything about pic and/or the nature of this >mysterious directive? >Peter Crockett You probably have the "old" troff, as opposed to the device independent troff (or ditroff). The old troff came with tbl and eqn only. To use pic you probably need ditroff. Any implementation of ditroff will do. (There are several companies that sell versions of ditroff, with added features and different bugs.) Paul. -- ------------------------------------------------------ |debra@research.att.com | uunet!research!debra | ------------------------------------------------------
jaap+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jaap Akkerhuis) (01/15/89)
> *Excerpts from ext.nn.comp.text: 14-Jan-89 Re: pic preprocessor for troff* > *Pegasystems@daedalus (1396)* > In article <1000@cmx.npac.syr.edu> crockett@top.cis.syr.edu (Peter Crockett) > writes: > >A professor came here with some troff source which uses a troff > >preprocessor called pic. He had the code for pic sent here, but it > >generates a troff directive D which is not understood by any troff on > >campus. Anyone know anything about pic and/or the nature of this > >mysterious directive? > > > the \D troff command belongs to ditroff and will not work with > nroff or troff if the troff is the old troff often distributed with systems. > however there is a command line argument to pic to use the old \L and \l > commands but this has only limited useability. Close, but not true. Early version of pic used \L etc. for short vertical & horizontal lines only and there was a flag which forced it always to use \D'...' However, the early sources of pic made it possible to generate old drawing characters by using a different module voor the pic to troff code generator (some like pltroff, my memory is fuzzy about this). I've used this quite happily with old fashioned troff for a while, just to prove that it was possible. It is also terribly slow...). Something else, the AT&T lawyers might frown upon the fact that somebody gives you the source from pic. Why don't you just get the latest version of DWB 2.0 (directly from at&t or from support offering companies like ELAN, SQUAD etc.). That will solve your problem and keep the lawyers away. jaap
mike@mks.UUCP (Mike Brookbank) (01/17/89)
In article <1000@cmx.npac.syr.edu>, crockett@top.cis.syr.edu (Peter Crockett) writes: > A professor came here with some troff source which uses a troff > preprocessor called pic. He had the code for pic sent here, but it > generates a troff directive D which is not understood by any troff on > campus. Anyone know anything about pic and/or the nature of this > mysterious directive? > > Peter Crockett The `D' directive to which you refer is understood as \D and is part of the enhanced version of the Documenter's Workbench. Most likely, your campus has an old version of Troff which understood a limited number of horizontal and vertical line commands and no spline commands. The newest versions have a very much more intelligent pic and a grap function which passes through the pic pre-processor. My firm manufactures a Dos port of the enhanced DWB called MKS SQPS. This software has been ported from the new enhanced versions for Unix machines manufactured by Softquad Inc. -- Mike Brookbank Phone: (519)884-2251 Mortice Kern Systems Inc. UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!mike 35 King St. North BIX: join mks Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2W9 CompuServe: 73260,1043
bamford@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Harold E. Bamford) (01/17/89)
In article <1000@cmx.npac.syr.edu> crockett@top.cis.syr.edu (Peter Crockett) writes: >A professor came here with some troff source which uses a troff >preprocessor called pic. He had the code for pic sent here, but it >generates a troff directive D which is not understood by any troff on >campus. Anyone know anything about pic and/or the nature of this >mysterious directive? Try re-compiling pic with -DOLDTROFF. I believe that this will cause drawing to be done with the old-style of troff commands. The D directive is (I believe) new with ditroff.