ngse18@castle.ed.ac.uk (J R Evans) (11/30/90)
The following sends a simple directive to troff, instructing it to mount a new font width table and discard output. It should return without error (as on this Dynix system). However, under Ultrix 4.0 for RISC, running on a DECstation 3100, troff returns an error and exits prematurely, thus: % echo '.fp 1 R' | troff -t >/dev/null Non-numeric character in font file /usr/lib/font/ftR (may be non-ASCII font file) It seems that the basic troff distributed by DEC in UDXBASE400 (the 'unsupported' part of the base system distribution) is incompatible with the width tables in the same component. The message suggests that troff is looking for an ASCII width table. I would appreciate an explanation of what's going on, and (even better) advice on how to fix it so that the Ultrix/RISC troff works! Peripheral detail: This came to light whilst trying to install Chris Lewis's psroff [*] package, and it prevents psroff (which relies an the proper operation of C/A/T troff) from working properly. Chris has been _very_ helpful, but he's not using Ultrix and I'm a troff tyro, so we're stuck! He advises: "MANY months ago I saw a news item go past about a version of cat troff that needs ASCII width tables that included some patches for some other package to work and included a brief description of the format ... I didn't save it, and it's just possible it was for Ultrix 4." This troff is unsupported by DEC, so their Customer Support people were sympathetic but unable to help. There is no documentation included other than the bsd texts by Ossanna and Kernighan. Specifically, I can find nothing on the file formats. I retrieved a copy of the version 3.0 files from the distribution media; diff says that the font width tables are identical, but the troff images are different. Nevertheless, the version 3.0 troff gives the same error message. Chris says that the file format appears to be the same as that of other Ultrix troffs he has seen. Others have managed to get psroff working under Ultrix 3.0, so I wonder if my problems are specific to Ultrix on RISC platforms? (DEC's CSC _were_ able to reproduce them). Thanks for any help you can offer - please MAIL me; I will gladly summarize. Russ Evans, Seismology Research Group, British Geological Survey, Edinburgh UK ngse18@castle.ed.ac.uk [Most Internet/BITNET hosts - old mailers may need to route via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk (internet) or ukacrl (BITNET) ] ngse18@uk.ac.ed.castle (JANET within UK only) [*] psroff is a very neat package - thanks to Chris and his collaborators!