psroff was part of the Transcript FWIW.  It was the moral equi to the UCB command vtroff which did the call to troff -t ... | vcat

BTW: I just peeked,  on Disk 4  of Kirk's archives are the source to both ditroff and Adobe's transcript in the 'local' directory.

I would suggest starting with transcript, copying to your system and typing 'make'
That will allow the BSD troff stuff to 'just work' us pscat/psroff/enscript et al.

This is how most sites that did not spring for a ditroff license worked with their Apple Laserwriters or later PS printers.

Then if you want to do the same thing with ditroff, that should 'just compile' and build and you replace troff with ditroff.

On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 11:38 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
Some web searching turns up something called 'psroff' from the late 80s
or so that will convert C/A/T to postscript. Google 'psroff source' and
you should find something you can use.

Arnold

arnold@skeeve.com wrote:

> Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > My questions:
> > 1. Is there a troff to postcript conversion utility present in a stock
> > 2.11 system (or even patch level 4xx system)?
>
> Troff from that era was designed to drive the C/A/T phototypesetter.
> There were tools that converted from C/A/T to postscript but they
> were mostly commercial IIRC.
>
> > 2. Is there a way to build postscript directly on the system?
>
> Likely not.
>
> > 3. Is there an alternative modern way to get to ps or pdf output from
> > the nroff/troff that 2.11 has?
>
> I would recommend tar-ing up the doc and macros, moving them to Linux
> or other modern system, and using groff -C to create postscript/pdf.
> That really will be the fastest way.
>
> Arnold