lord@alcor.usc.edu (Brian Lord) (02/14/90)
Hello netland! Is there a previewer for troff or postscript that will work under X11? thanks in advance! B. Lord (lord@alcor.usc.edu)
moraes@cs.toronto.edu (Mark Moraes) (02/15/90)
[One more for the Frequently Asked Questions list, perhaps?] lord@alcor.usc.edu (Brian Lord) writes: >Is there a previewer for troff or postscript that will work under X11? X.V11R4 has two previewers for device-independent troff. (Device independent troff is part of the Documenter's Workbench from AT&T as ditroff, some vendors have actually ported it to their machines) xditview in the core distribution and xtroff in contrib. Small fix needed to compile R4 xtroff enclosed below. If by troff you mean the antique version that some vendors ship (The one that usually says "Typesetter busy." when you run it with no arguments), then you may want to try converting from its output to ditroff output using Chris Lewis' psroff (posted to comp.sources.unix in Volume 20, see your neighbourhood archive site, or get a newer version by anon. ftp from gatekeeper.dec.com in /pub/misc/psroff-pl7.tar.Z) and then using xditview or xtroff. I haven't tried this -- some hacking may be required. Elan and SoftQuad ship eroff and sqtroff respectively -- both are enhanced and have previewers for X, I believe. (I haven't used either of them) A PostScript previewer exists -- known to run on R3 (should work under R4, but I haven't tried yet) -- see contrib/xps.tar.Z available for anon. ftp from expo.lcs.mit.edu and other archive sites. It does a reasonably complete job on Suns of previewing most PostScript, modulo a lack of good fonts. (Portable PostScript, Hah!) Another PostScript previewer, GNU ghostscript sort of runs on X11 -- I've only ever seen it run on Ultrix uVaxen -- it had some vax dependencies in the bad old days of 1.2 or so, and I haven't tried it since. It also firmly believed the only possible window size to be 640x400 or suchlike, and I don't recall convincing it otherwise. Maybe when 1.4 shows up on prep... (there's a 1.4beta on uunet, I think) I believe it works much better on IBM-PCs with EGA. xtroff needs the following fix to xwindows.c. I'll issue a real patch Real Soon Now. 34c34 < # define XtScrollBarSetThumb XawScrollbarSetThumb --- > # define XtScrollBarSetThumb XawScrollBarSetThumb --- If it doesn't have (device-independent) troff, it ain't Real Unix :-(
david@ics.ics.COM (David B. Lewis) (02/17/90)
lord@alcor.usc.edu (Brian Lord) writes: >Is there a previewer for troff or postscript that will work under X11? One other package to add to Mark Moraes's posting: Image Network's xroff package contains a nice troff reimplementation and an X-based page previewer. The some-months-old beta I have isn't completely stable; the new version is shipping perhaps as early as next week. Image Network is at 1-800-TOXROFF or at 415-967-0542 within CA. (This was the package whose abuse of the X prefix touched off last July's wailings.) David B. Lewis david@ics.com david%ics.UUCP@bu.edu ...!uunet!ics.com!david "I am astounded ... at the wonderful power you have developed - and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever." -Arthur Sullivan, seeing a demonstration of Edison's new talking machine in 1888
rauletta@gmuvax2.gmu.edu (R. J. Auletta) (02/17/90)
In article <90Feb15.001555est.643@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> moraes@cs.toronto.edu (Mark Moraes) writes: >[One more for the Frequently Asked Questions list, perhaps?] > >lord@alcor.usc.edu (Brian Lord) writes: >>Is there a previewer for troff or postscript that will work under X11? > Also there is a commercial program offered by Elan called express. It runs under both X11R3 and X11R4. It is pretty slick especially if you buy their troff package (some shell scripts and filters plus ditroff etc etc). For the price it just can't be beat. Add xfig, idraw, and a postscript printer and you can get down to some serious troff document preparation. This thing works and works right. I mean pic figures, tables, equations, the lot, but beware that both this program and xtroff both have a tendency to crash when our ethernet gets "busy". --R J Auletta rauletta@sitevax.gmu.edu
kent@wsl.dec.com (Christopher A. Kent) (02/20/90)
And I'll put in my standard plug for the PostScript previewer that's available on DEC workstations with UWS2.1 or UWS2.2. Real PostScript by Adobe, with real Adobe fonts. (Accept no substitutes :-) Chris Kent Western Software Laboratory Digital Equipment Corporation kent@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!kent (415) 853-6639
battlewr@BATTLE.ESD.ORNL.GOV (David L. Battle) (02/20/90)
> And I'll put in my standard plug for the PostScript previewer that's > available on DEC workstations with UWS2.1 or UWS2.2. Real PostScript by > Adobe, with real Adobe fonts. (Accept no substitutes :-) This is a proprietary solution and therefore, in my opinion, a non-solution. If I am not mistaken it even requires DEC's own proprietary server to run (so you can't even run it on a VAX from your Sun workstation). I use X because things are portable. I use SUNs at school and DECstations at work. If something doesn't work on both of them I don't use it. If DEC would like to distribute (free or otherwise) a Sun version of dxpsview (as well as one for other vendor's equipment), on the other hand I would be more than happy to consider it a valid alternative. -David L. Battle battle@battle.esd.ornl.gov
meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) (02/21/90)
In article <2822@bacchus.dec.com> kent@wsl.dec.com (Christopher A. Kent) writes: | And I'll put in my standard plug for the PostScript previewer that's | available on DEC workstations with UWS2.1 or UWS2.2. Real PostScript by | Adobe, with real Adobe fonts. (Accept no substitutes :-) I dunno, when I went to work for OSF and have a Pmin (DECstation 2100) on my desk, I was seriously underwhelmed by Dec's postscript program (dxpsview). I was trying to proof a document created by eroff, and found the normal fonts were unreadable, and the bold fonts did not get printed on my screen at all. Another misfeature is not taking input on pipes. I finally went back to proofing the old fashioned way by either printing out the documents, or by using nroff piped into less. -- Michael Meissner email: meissner@osf.org phone: 617-621-8861 Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA Catproof is an oxymoron, Childproof is nearly so
jordan@morgan.COM (Jordan Hayes) (02/21/90)
> And I'll put in my standard plug for the PostScript previewer that's > available on DEC workstations with UWS2.1 or UWS2.2. Real PostScript by > Adobe, with real Adobe fonts. (Accept no substitutes :-) hey, so cheap! UWS couldn't be too expensive, right? maybe $1k tops, but software can get that way. after saber and frame, i'm used to it. all i need now is $20k for that other "optional hardware" for this really cool software package! thanks! /jordan