wrb@milton.u.washington.edu (William Barker) (08/23/90)
I'm trying to print the Sybase system admin docs. For several of the files, when using the "ptroff -msyb -rT1 filename" command, the doc doesn't finish printing, and I get the message "can't open file /x.1.size", where x is the chapter number of the doc. Anybody else seen this, and more importantly, anybody got a cure?? By the way, some of the docs print just fine. Thanks in advance, Bill Barker U of Washington (206) 543-7315
wrb@milton.u.washington.edu (William Barker) (08/23/90)
Regarding the Sybase docs printing problem, NextAnswers came through. I should have looked there first! Seems there are some roff codes (.Sc) related to figures that cause the printing to bomb. Edit out those codes, and the docs print fine, albeit without the figures. Oh well.... And now back to our show. Bill Barker U of Washington (206) 543-7315
stan@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Stan Osborne) (08/23/90)
In article <6607@milton.u.washington.edu> wrb@milton.u.washington.edu (William Barker) writes: > >I'm trying to print the Sybase system admin docs. For several of the >files, when using the "ptroff -msyb -rT1 filename" command, the doc >doesn't finish printing, and I get the message "can't open file /x.1.size", >where x is the chapter number of the doc. Anybody else seen this, and more >importantly, anybody got a cure?? By the way, some of the docs print just >fine. As released the Sybase docs (troff source) are a mess. I guess they really want you to buy paper from them. :-) I have cleaned these documents up. (Yes there are bugs in their troff source code.) Then I ran them through a version of ditroff 2.0 on this cube that produces good EPSF (.eps) files. (The ptroff that comes with the cube is based on a very old version of troff.) I'm not quite sure how to make the EPS version of the Sybase manuals available. (I have to check on the legality of putting copyrighted documents out for anonymous ftping.) I will be working on finishing up the manuals later this evening. I could at a minimum release patches. But that does not fix the problem of the juvenile (brain dead) troff provided with the cube. (People with cubes do have quite an appetite for good PostScript. ) Comments or suggestions welcomed. Stan -- Stan Osborne, Computer Science Department, San Francisco State University Internet: stan@cs.sfsu.edu Usenet: cshub!stan Voice: (415) 338-2168
stan@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Stan Osborne) (08/23/90)
In article <6612@milton.u.washington.edu> wrb@milton.u.washington.edu (William Barker) writes: >Regarding the Sybase docs printing problem, NextAnswers came through. I >should have looked there first! > >Seems there are some roff codes (.Sc) related to figures that cause the >printing to bomb. Edit out those codes, and the docs print fine, albeit >without the figures. Oh well.... > ".Sc" is the name of a macro defined in "tmac.syb" the Sybase troff macros. All of the "SCREEN" style examples used by ".Sc" were left out when Sybase copied over the manual sources. In addition to leaving out examples that are normally included in the manual, there are no instructions on how to convert the troff source into something humans more easily understand. It would have been nice if they had provided a "makefile" and had tested it on a clean system to confirm it really would work for all next customers. The Sybase documentation provided with the system can only be made usable (barely) by someone who has access to NextAnswers or has experience dealing with incomplete and makefile-less troff source code. It is very likely Businessland customers will have neither of these. I can only imagine the problems this causes Sybase when new NeXT customers call them and ask them for help deciphering the files they find in /NextLibrary/Documentation/Sybase. ---- In a previous posting I said I had worked around bugs and was processing the manuals. I should have qualified my statement by saying I was doing my best to work around the missing SCREEN format examples and missing makefiles. I hope these problems are amoung those corrected with the 2.0 release rumored for later this year Stan -- Stan Osborne, Computer Science Department, San Francisco State University Internet: stan@cs.sfsu.edu Usenet: cshub!stan Voice: (415) 338-2168