27 Jul
2020
27 Jul
'20
9:53 p.m.
Clem,
Thanks for explaining it so clearly. I'll give copying the macros back
to host and referencing them explicitly a try before I go hacking on the
source files.
and yes, I'm a wimp. I love tooling around in v6... up until the 15th
time I've typed in a program that should work, but doesn't because of
some hidden backspace or tab or who knows what little problem (don't
paste source into ed, if # is the erase key, cuz ed eats the comments,
and so on). I like vi (heck, I love vi, and I don't mean vim, although
vim's nice too) so 211 bsd is refreshing :). If I could EVER get vi and
tar to cooperate on v6, I think I'd be happy to stick with it, but no
matter how many times I try, the best I ever get is a big headache and
crippletar and I'm not even sure v6 will run vi, even for gurus, but if
it does, I'm no guru. However, that said, I'm getting pretty good with
ed these days :).
Thanks,
Will
On 7/26/20 10:33 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 10:58 AM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com
<mailto:will.senn@gmail.com>> wrote:
All,
So... I've moved on from v7 to 2.11bsd - shucks, vi and tar and
co. just work there and everything else seems to be similar enough
for what I'm interested in anyway. So yay, I won't be pestering
y'all about vi anymore :). One the other hand, now I'm interested
in printing the docs.
Wimp .. ;-) seriously at this step, it might be easier for you as a
more modern user.
2.11bsd comes with docs in, of all places, /usr/doc.
Well that is where is was in V7 ;-)
In there are makefiles for making the docs - ok, make nroff will
make ascii docs, and troff will make troff? docs using Ossana's
'original' troff.
yep
So, after adding -t to it so it didn't complain about 'typesetter
busy', I got no errors.
right...
I mounted a tape, tar'ed my .out file and untar'ed it on my
macbook (did it for the nroff and troff output). Then I hit the
first snag, groff -Tps -ms troff.out > whatever.ps
<http://whatever.ps> resulted in cannot adjust line and cannot
break line errors and groff -Tps -ms nroff.out > whatever.ps
<http://whatever.ps> resulted in a bunch of double vision. I seem
to recall doing this in v6 and it working ok (at least for nroff).
Well let's just save -ms and troff itself were re-implemented and
there are likely to be some small differences.
At UCB, the command would have been: tbl < input_troff_text | eqn |
troff -t -ms | vcat
vcat(1) was the virtual CAT typesetter using a Versatec Plotter.
Adobe released a source-level product called transcript, that you
recompiled and ran on V7 or later (like the PDP-11s). My memory
it was ~ $1K back in the day. Transcript 2.0 contained a number of
tools. One was a CAT to PS converter. Another was the tables for the
ditroff to spit out PS so: ditroff -Tps worked as expected and a
program called 'enscript' that converted from txt to PS.
All of these tools have modern FOSS equivalents, but it may take some
hunting to find them. I think sources to transcript 2.0 can be found
if you google around. I'm not sure Adobe ever officially made is
FOSS, but after the modern equivalent showed up, I'm not aware of them
minding that people did not have the license since it sold more
printers with PostScript. That should just recompile on V7 or later
and 'just work.' The modern equivalent might take some backporting.
BTW: Thinking about this, I believe I remember that there is a
directory on Kirk's CD's that have a copy from UCB. Mount his disks
and poke around. I'll try to look myself but I'm supposed to be
helping my wife get ready for a socially distanced birthday party for
our great-niece [we have the big back yard, tent et al that can handle
the 6 foot part requirements].
My questions:
1. Is there a troff to postcript conversion utility present in a
stock 2.11 system (or even patch level 4xx system)?
The word "present"t is the operative term. Probably not.
2. Is there a way to build postscript directly on the system?
Yes, see above.
3. Is there an alternative modern way to get to ps or pdf output
from the nroff/troff that 2.11 has?
Yep - Ghostscript based tools which is what the Transcript
replacements tend to use.
I'm still digging into the nroff stuff as that may be just minor
diffs between ancient nroff macros and "modern" macros or even
just errors (.sp -2 rather than .sp or .sp -1, .in -2 instead of
.in +2), etc.
Be careful - that's not quite the same. Basically groff fixed a
number of long-standing issues that older troff/ditroff had worked
around. Usually, the difference is that the original nroff/troff has
some defaults that now need to make explicit. But most older *roff
documents can go through modern groff just fine. The more typical
error from old documents is a site that did not have a Versatec or
later an Apple Laserwriter and only supported nroff. A number of
documents when created for nroff will look ugly when you run them
through any version of troff (old or new) as the document authors
never took the time to deal with the differences in the output device.
Although, the files display ok in 2.11bsd using nroff -ms nroff.out...
I would expect so. I bet they are fine with troff -t or if you can
find ditroff (which also maybe on Kirk's CD) and then run the output
through vcat or transcript. Note if you used vcat you will get some
printing facsimiles that were there back in the day. The reason is
when Tom Ferrin wrote vcat, the only fonts he had were the old Hershey
fonts (fonts have gotten >>so<< much better since then). So troff is
using Wang CAT4 typesetter font rules and Tim is doing the best he can
to map that to Hershey. The PS CAT simulator in Transcript has the
same issue BTW. It's a little better since the PS fonts are better
but they don't map the 100%. However, if you use ditroff, Adobe
supplied the rules in Transcript so that ditroff did its calculations
using the proper fonts (Adobe's not Wang's).
Clem
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