cwr@pnet01.cts.com (Will Rose) (01/11/91)
The recently posted mroff looks like a good beginning - I tried it on
a 10MHz XT running 1.5.10, and much of it worked, albeit slowly.
Problems found:
1. The file hindi.ms contains characters with the high bit set (these
aren't garbage characters). The file therefore won't unshar, and stops
the rest of the docs unsharring. A swift edit with vi cures this.
2. It would be easier to do the installation if there was an (ascii)
file called INSTALL; but the problems (siting an additional "include"
directory, stopping one unsharred Makefile overwriting another, are
pretty trivial.
3. I use an Herc graphics card clone that works with all the MSDOS
software I've tried it with; and it almost works with hgc. Hgc puts
the file on the screen in the right font, but the top left-hand corner
of the virtual screen is randomly sited on the physical screen. All
the rest of the virtual screen is then wrapped right/left top/bottom
from the starting point. About one time in ten it comes out square.
When I have time I'll look at this, unless someone else gets there
first. By the way, it takes 20-30 sec to build a page on this
machine - not really practical for constant use.
4. At the moment I have only 1.5MB of HD space free, so none of the
printer drivers apart from oki120 would build an output file, even
from a 2K original. oki120 won't drive an Epson MX80 (produces
garbage), may drive an Epson RX80 (mine blew its power supply, but I
think that's a coincidence) and will drive an Epson LQ850.
All in all, a marvellous start. I've wanted a troff for a long time,
and this looks as if its well on the way to becoming one. To put stuff
on the screen you'll need a fast 286 or 386, in practice, but at least
it should be possible to print all these wretched manuals correctly.
Per ardua ad aspidistra - Will
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INET: cwr@pnet01.cts.comu31b3hs@cip-s01.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Haardt) (01/15/91)
Hello world! Will Rose writes in "Mroff 1.0": >1. The file hindi.ms contains characters with the high bit set (these >aren't garbage characters). The file therefore won't unshar, and stops >the rest of the docs unsharring. A swift edit with vi cures this. Sorry for this, I was so sure that everything was ok, but it seems as if I forgot Murphy. I will post it uuencoded this week. In my next distribution, I will avoid these characters, but I need them at the moment. >3. I use an Herc graphics card clone that works with all the MSDOS >software I've tried it with; and it almost works with hgc. Hgc puts >the file on the screen in the right font, but the top left-hand corner >of the virtual screen is randomly sited on the physical screen. All >the rest of the virtual screen is then wrapped right/left top/bottom >from the starting point. About one time in ten it comes out square. >When I have time I'll look at this, unless someone else gets there >first. By the way, it takes 20-30 sec to build a page on this >machine - not really practical for constant use. You must use softscroll! I mentioned it somewhere in the documentation. Sorry for the long preview time, I am using a 20 MHz 386 machine. It will be faster, if you use less font and size changes. The manuals are the worst case for this, espacially the pages with tables of special characters. Usual text should be faster. >4. At the moment I have only 1.5MB of HD space free, so none of the >printer drivers apart from oki120 would build an output file, even >from a 2K original. oki120 won't drive an Epson MX80 (produces >garbage), may drive an Epson RX80 (mine blew its power supply, but I >think that's a coincidence) and will drive an Epson LQ850. Hmm, it should work... I don't know what are the right escape sequences for MX80. If you can fix them to drive MX80 and RX80, please send me cdiffs to the email adress below. I suggest that you set DOTS_PER_ROW to the half value and double the number of buffers in the driver. The temporary file will take half of its original space, but this restricts you to 8 inch wide paper. Perhaps not a serious restriction for you. Steve Kirkendall sent me a mroff output to ASCII driver. This allows you to have a *very* fast "preview" for tty lines (without correct justification, no special characters etc), but it is ok for reading manuals. This will be included in version 1.1. I will post this version, when I finished working on it. It will include a better documentation, more features and a better -ms library. Michael Haardt Send email to: u31b3hs%cip-s01.informatik.rwth-aachen.de@unido.bitnet Please do not use the adress in the header! ------------------------------- Namaskaar ------------------------------