rosenkra@convex.com (William Rosencranz) (02/20/91)
a few days ago i inquired about MROFF sources. i have them. thanx for all
the attention :-). i am starting v2.0 of nroff RSN, again for atari TOS
(not necessarily minix). here is what it *should* do:
o hyphenation (partially working now, but not released)
o all the missing things (traps, diversions, etc)
o support proportional fonts (by supporting tab<name> files, -Tname)
o special pager for reading manpages (with nice fonts) under TOS,
at least, probably MGR as well (more or less running now, part of
man system i posted to c.b.atari.st)
o support tbl/eqn/refer, possibly pic (i may use GNU versions as
a base)
o more or less troff with nroff as a subset (using tab<name>)
o support laser printers (again, from -Tname, tab<name>) at least
HP varieties (if i can get my hands on a deskjet for cheap) or
maybe epson-ish 24-pin dot matrix (i have LQ-1000)
o full -man (proper IP and TP), -ms (lots missing now but usable)
o possibly support for other languages (funky char sets :-)
o MAYBE it will still fit in 64+64, but i can make no promises, nor
will i sacrifice capability/speed just for this
this will take a couple of months, depending on free time i have. it will
be developed under gcc (TOS/MiNT/MGR). you may be better off with mroff which
looks pretty good, so far, but may need some cleaning up (based on some
other folk's inability to get it to compile). this has become somewhat a
hobby for me (what a sick, sick man!). i may use parts of GNU roff (groff?)
which is probably notorious for its hoggish memory use. i may also make
some things (like hyphenation) conditional at compile time, so it can fit
in (stupid - sorry, andy) 64+64 space. hyphenation tables eat LOTS of data
space, if you support a reasonable exception list (for english, of course).
what i need to know is what sort of support does minix have/will have for
fonts of any type (screen, in particular). not just termcap, but fonts
(e.g. special char sets). is there work in progress on getting MGR to
work? that would be a plus (IMHO). note that i know how to deal with
non-screen fonts (since output will generally redirect to file which
could be cat'd to device). currently, the TOS version, with a special
"device" (a special pager) implements the full \(xx troff escapes (e.g.
upper/lower greek, math, etc). if u have not seen this, and have an atari,
you may want to give it a look-see (check comp.{binaries,sources}.atari.st
archives for nroff 1.10p4 and manpager - monochrome TOS only). manpages
look real nice with Times Roman, uline, bold, special chars, and small
char set.
later...
-bill
rosenkra@convex.com
--
Bill Rosenkranz |UUCP: {uunet,texsun}!convex!c1yankee!rosenkra
Convex Computer Corp. |ARPA: rosenkra%c1yankee@convex.com