whm@arizona.UUCP (06/06/83)
I'm sure that everybody that uses troff is irritated by the restriction
placed on the number of fonts (4) that can be mounted at one time. I
understand that ditroff has a much larger limit, but, like a number
of people, we have ditroff, but don't have it working on anything.
Has anybody hacked up troff to handle more than four fonts? I know about
the Lincoln-Sudbury nroff enhancements, but I don't believe they're
applicable to troff, i.e., they appear to be nroff-specific. The version
of troff that we use with our typesetter was hacked up by a long-left
wizard to accommodate 8 fonts at the expense of some size bits. We'd like
to have vtroff do the same things that our version of troff can do, but
nobody has gotten up the steam to unmodify the portions of our troff that
are typesetter specific. Does anybody know if vcat is bound to four
fonts, or if it would be fairly easy to make it deal with more fonts if
troff didn't have the intrinsic limitation.
On a slightly different subject, the Berkeley Font Catalog in 2C of
the manual set alludes to digitized bitmap fonts that are available
from Johns Hopkins that are apparently of higher quality than those
that come with 4.1bsd. Does anybody know anything about the fonts
from Johns Hopkins or about availability of fonts that are of higher
quality than what comes on 4.1[2?]bsd.
I would have posted this to net.text, but it looks like the
group creation message has been lost or hasn't made it out this
far yet.
Bill Mitchell
whm.arizona@rand-relay
{kpno,mcnc,utah-cs}!arizona!whmmsc@qubix.UUCP (06/06/83)
Re: the following questions
Has anybody hacked up troff to handle more than four fonts? I
know about the Lincoln-Sudbury nroff enhancements, but I don't
believe they're applicable to troff, i.e., they appear to be
nroff-specific. The version of troff that we use with our
typesetter was hacked up by a long-left wizard to accommodate 8
fonts at the expense of some size bits.
Yes indeed. Objects in troff are stored in 16 bit quantities with 2 bits
for the font and 4 bits for the point size. Your wizard made a very
ugly hack. I don't think there are enough point sizes as it is. The only
sensible way to get more fonts is to use ditroff. It would be far easier to
write a post-processor for ditroff than try to hack troff again.
Does anybody know if vcat is bound to four fonts, or if it
would be fairly easy to make it deal with more fonts if troff
didn't have the intrinsic limitation.
I suspect that vcat will need modifications such as giving it more space
for fonts tables etc., modifying the argument checking etc. There is probably
nothing major but again I suspect the time would be better spent writing
a post processor for ditroff.
Mark Callow
Qubix Graphic Systems Inc.
...{decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!qubix!msc
...{ittvax,amd70}!qubix!msc
decwrl!qubix!msc@Berkeley.ARPAgeo@watarts.uucp (Geo Swan) (06/08/83)
Bill Mitchell, in the article to which this is a followup, asked if anyone had hacked up troff, to add more fonts. He alluded to 'the Lincoln-Sudbury nroff enhancements'. I have never heard of the Lincoln-Sudbury nroff enhancements. Anybody out there care to fill us in?
pdl@root44.UUCP (06/10/83)
For those who don't already know, {di|ti}troff handles an arbitrary number
of fonts (modulo device capabilities), you just name them (e.g. \fOKfred\fP),
see the paper from B.W. Kernighan for details (it also handles MANY point sizes
Dave Lukes (...!vax135!ukc!root44!pdl)