bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) (09/19/88)
I made up the shareware jetroff package today and can report that
it is well worth the $50 contribution he asks for. It appears to
do everything that was claimed and it gets along fine with the LJ-II.
I have encountered an anomaly with V/AT Text Preparation and jetroff.
When I try to produce the man pages that came with it or some of the
other I have the first part is omitted and the page starts with
SYNOPSIS. It also occaisionally prints macros as though they were
part of the man page text. I never saw this before because I could
never use troff before. The symptom does not appear when I use nroff
so I ASSume that the macros are OK. It also seems reasonable that
since jetroff is a post-processor, he's not lopping things off the front
or deciding that .RS is part of the text. I suspect that troff might
be busted.
Has anyone used Microport V/AT troff to produce manual pages? If so,
did they appear to come out right? Which post-processor did you use?
I might add that I noticed some anomalies using the -mm macros (fixed
by changing some .I's to \fI) but the problem is most prevalent using
the -man macros. Once the page gets going, other than the .RS, .IP,
and .B that creep in from time to time it works just fine.
Kudo's to Rick Richardson for working out such a useful tool. Phooey's
to those that think he should give it away, it's a lot more than any
of us could do/get for $50. You already spent over thirty times that
for your LJ-II.
--
Bill Kennedy Internet: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM
Usenet: { killer | att | rutgers | uunet!bigtex }!ssbn!billjmsully@uport.UUCP (John M. Sully) (09/21/88)
In article <152@carpet.WLK.COM> bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) writes: >Has anyone used Microport V/AT troff to produce manual pages? If so, >did they appear to come out right? Which post-processor did you use? I've used the -man macros with troff and devps to produce man pages for UNaXcess, rn, news 2.11 as well as my own man pages and have never experienced any problems with it... Since I have collected jetroff, perhaps I should try printing up the pages using this combination here. John M. Sully
bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) (09/21/88)
In article <152@carpet.WLK.COM> I wrote + Has anyone used Microport V/AT troff to produce manual pages? If so, + did they appear to come out right? Which post-processor did you use? In article <476@uport.UUCP>, jmsully@uport.UUCP (John M. Sully) replies: | I've used the -man macros with troff and devps to produce man pages for | UNaXcess, rn, news 2.11 as well as my own man pages and have never | experienced any problems with it... | | Since I have collected jetroff, perhaps I should try printing up the pages | using this combination here. | | John M. Sully I appreciate John's prompt and encouraging reply. I suspect that since he has used the ps post-processor and gotten good results, that one works. I'm eager to hear how it works out with JetRoff because I have verified the results with two different systems and got the same result, i.e. the uPort troff lops off the top the other troff doesn't. I also tried sending the troff output to the other system (my troff is Microport) and he got the same result. It seems unlikely that the JetRoff post-processor is doing the surgery because the same troff source through Textware's DWB and JetRoff produces the desired result. This one's a puzzle and John seems to have the key. BTW John, you can't run the make as he sends it, make chokes on cd and the other make, but if you do it a piece at a time and use -Ml it goes together without a whimper. The $64K question is --- what if you get the same result that we did, who dun it? Who's going to do what about it? Since Rick specifically calls out DWB 2.0 and V/AT DWB is 1.0 could that be the problem? -- Bill Kennedy Internet: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM Usenet: { killer | att | rutgers | uunet!bigtex }!ssbn!bill
rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) (09/22/88)
In article <154@carpet.WLK.COM> bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) writes: >the same result. It seems unlikely that the JetRoff post-processor is doing >the surgery because the same troff source through Textware's DWB and JetRoff >produces the desired result. This one's a puzzle and John seems to have the >key. > >result that we did, who dun it? Who's going to do what about it? Since >Rick specifically calls out DWB 2.0 and V/AT DWB is 1.0 could that be the >problem? I only called out 2.0 because thats what every troff user *should* have, and thats what I tested against. But ".B" being ignored by your troff and flying straight through into JetRoff to be printed as ".B" just isn't something that JetRoff has any control over. And I doubt that other 1.0 DWB troff's do anything so blantantly wrong, either. If I were John, I'd listen to the V/AT customers who've clamored for 2.0 for awhile now, and get somebody to compile it up on the 286. Its gotta be easier than trying to find, fix, and placate the people who have 1.0. And looky here, if you really have b*lls, you can charge 'em a 'small' upgrade fee. :-( -- Rick Richardson, PC Research, Inc. rick%pcrat.uucp@uunet.uu.net (INTERNET) uunet!pcrat!rick (UUCP, Personal Mail) ..!pcrat!jetroff (JetRoff Info) ..!pcrat!dry2 (Dhrystone Submissions)
bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) (09/23/88)
In article <580@pcrat.UUCP> rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) writes: >In article <154@carpet.WLK.COM> bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) writes: [ deleting what I wrote ] >I only called out 2.0 because thats what every troff user *should* have, Sure Rick, and JetRoff isn't as cute unless you have the new pic and grap, but it's not what I have (and I don't mean to suggest that Microport promoted it as anything other than what I have. There was an implied (by me) thought that it functioned correctly, but they didn't promote as such or imply that it does...) I was groping for some obscure hook or handle that would explain why the same source can be puches through Elan, Textware, or Xenix and produce the desired result but through Microport it's missing vital parts and includes extraneous parts. >If I were John, I'd listen to the V/AT customers who've clamored >for 2.0 for awhile now, and get somebody to compile it up on the 286. >Its gotta be easier than trying to find, fix, and placate the people >who have 1.0. And looky here, if you really have b*lls, you can charge >'em a 'small' upgrade fee. :-( Darn it! That gets my goat! I have gotten my money's worth out of V/AT DWB because I started with an AT&T PC 6300 PLUS and Microport was the only game in town for nroff (note, not troff). I have consistently recommended it to the 6300 PLUS mailing list. I'm not grousing about "a 'small' upgrade fee" from 1.0 to 2.0, that's justified and reasonable. I'm bitching because I have once again bought defective product. I'll qualify that... The same troff source breezes through three other vendors' troff without a hitch, what am I supposed to think? I said I got my money's worth and indeed I have. I have no complaint with what I paid for DWB 1.0, nor with what I wanted it to do (I had no troff capable output device). I'm wailing because, once again (and I am personally starting to think `as usual') I didn't get something that works as advertised. I'm as weary of complaining about it as the rest of you are about reading about it and Microport is about ignoring it. -- Bill Kennedy Internet: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM Usenet: { killer | att | rutgers | uunet!bigtex }!ssbn!bill