26 Jul
2020
26 Jul
'20
8:56 p.m.
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.
2.11bsd comes with docs in, of all places, /usr/doc. 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. So, after
adding -t to it so it didn't complain about 'typesetter busy', I got no
errors. 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 resulted in cannot adjust
line and cannot break line errors and groff -Tps -ms nroff.out >
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).
My questions:
1. Is there a troff to postcript conversion utility present in a stock
2.11 system (or even patch level 4xx system)?
2. Is there a way to build postscript directly on the system?
3. Is there an alternative modern way to get to ps or pdf output from
the nroff/troff that 2.11 has?
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.
Although, the files display ok in 2.11bsd using nroff -ms nroff.out...
Thanks,
Will
--
GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF
26 Jul
26 Jul
9:31 p.m.
Will Senn <will.senn(a)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
9:35 p.m.
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(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Will Senn <will.senn(a)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 
10:15 p.m.
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(a)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(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Will Senn <will.senn(a)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
11:11 p.m.
There was a different psroff posted to comp.sources.unix volume 20;
that's what I was referring to.
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
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(a)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(a)skeeve.com wrote:
>
> > Will Senn <will.senn(a)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
>
27 Jul
27 Jul
12:03 a.m.
I wonder if it used troff or ditroff and then what it used for the ps
engine (probably Ghostscript) and if ditroff, from where the font metric
tables came? I also wonder what it was using for cat4 to ps conversion
again like Ghostscript. Like most folks in those days (even most
Universities) since Transcript was reasonably inexpensive, most people
bought it after they got their first PS based printer, particularly if they
had chosen to upgrade to ditroff. For Masscomp (one advantage of being a
$10K-$50K machine not a $4K one), I did manage to convince management to
buy ditroff and transcript and buy the distribution license for both. It
increased our price by less than $100 but we justified it that we really
did not want to have to support the original troff and the price to AT&T
and Adobe was just cost of doing business and cheaper for us from a cost of
maintenance standpoint. We then just bundled ditroff/transcript on every
machine. Funny, Sun charged for both, it was fairly cheap - I want to say
$500 a node (Larry may remember). But you had to buy it from
Sun ala-cart. Many (most) universities did not because they already had
the sources for their Vaxen, so then tended to recompile and move it.
At Stellar we used Sun's as the 'porting base' - since we had to buy
AT&T
redistributions licenses anyway, we didn't pay the Sun per node tax.
On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 1:11 PM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
There was a different psroff posted to
comp.sources.unix volume 20;
that's what I was referring to.
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
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(a)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(a)skeeve.com wrote:
>
> > Will Senn <will.senn(a)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
>
27 Jan
27 Jan
11:24 a.m.
[[ sorry for the late reply -- I'm still catching up from a rather
tumultuous summer, fall, and first part of winter ]]
At Sun, 26 Jul 2020 14:03:49 -0400, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Troff to ps
I wonder if it used troff or ditroff and then what it used for the ps
engine (probably Ghostscript) and if ditroff, from where the font metric
tables came?
The "psroff" Arnold referred to was written by Chris Lewis and
translated the C/A/T codes from the original v7 troff into PostScript.
It has nothing to do with the "psroff" that was in the tpscript or
Transcript PostScript add-on packages for ditroff, though it was sort of
created in parallel with what was happening with ditroff, aka DWB,
i.e. the Documenter's Workbench.
Psroff is/was kind of like "thack" and orthogonal to "cat2desk".
Once upon a time there were FAQs published regularly on Usenet where one
could learn all these kinds of things, e.g. the FAQ for comp.text.
Psroff was still very necessary at the time because there were a
plethora of "unix" vendors who were still basically using very early
System V, Xenix, or even 7th Edition licenses, and so there was no hope
of thier users ever getting something so modern and cool as ditroff.
And there was no Groff (though it appeared shortly thereafter).
On example of such a vendor was Spectrix, for whom Chris worked for at
the time he initially created psroff. Spectrix was using Xenix, and I
think even upgraded as far as Xenix V, but it and its customers were far
too cheap for, and more or less going out of business by the time of,
ditroff et al.
Psroff 2.0 was released when I was working with Chris at Elegant
Communications. We were still doing a bit of minor support for the few
remaining Spectrix customers, and had a Spectrix machine to do it with,
but by then it was pretty old and crusty and not of much interest. I
seem to remember we didn't even keep it powered up for most of the time.
As I recall even some of the bigger vendors such as Sun and IBM didn't
offer ditroff in their base OS, but they did offer old troff. Those
were the days of insane AT&T licensing and all the games competitors
played around it.
For what it's worth, back at that time I had a 3B2 at home and I was
running much a more modern version of Unix, complete with ditroff, than
anything we had at work at ECI at the time.
--
Greg A. Woods <gwoods(a)acm.org>
Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods(a)robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods(a)planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods(a)avoncote.ca>
28 Jan
28 Jan
6:19 a.m.
Greg A. Woods <woods(a)robohack.ca> wrote:
As I recall even some of the bigger vendors such as
Sun and IBM didn't
offer ditroff in their base OS, but they did offer old troff. Those
were the days of insane AT&T licensing and all the games competitors
played around it.
As I recall, AT&T wanted about the same amount of money for ditroff as
for the entire UNIX release. So, of course no UNIX vendor was going to
double the royalty they paid to AT&T for every customer, for a small
improvement in a utility that most customers didn't even use (troff).
John
7:25 a.m.
Actually It was very cheap. $5 a copy if I remember correctly Masscomp
and Stellar just ate the cost. The adobe transcript license was also
nominal. In both cases we realized it was cheaper than trying to keep two
separate streams and figure out which systems we shipped it too.
On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 7:26 PM John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> wrote:
Greg A. Woods <woods(a)robohack.ca> wrote:
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
As I recall even some of the bigger vendors such
as Sun and IBM didn't
offer ditroff in their base OS, but they did offer old troff. Those
were the days of insane AT&T licensing and all the games competitors
played around it.
As I recall, AT&T wanted about the same amount of money for ditroff as
for the entire UNIX release. So, of course no UNIX vendor was going to
double the royalty they paid to AT&T for every customer, for a small
improvement in a utility that most customers didn't even use (troff).
John
-- 
7:59 a.m.
I was just an engineer but what John said sort of is what I thought. There
was some money weirdness around anything above nroff/troff. I don't think
it was $5 but as I said, I was an engineer, nobody directly told me this
stuff.
On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 08:25:33PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
Actually It was very cheap. $5 a copy if I remember
correctly Masscomp
and Stellar just ate the cost. The adobe transcript license was also
nominal. In both cases we realized it was cheaper than trying to keep two
separate streams and figure out which systems we shipped it too.
On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 7:26 PM John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> wrote:
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
Greg A. Woods <woods(a)robohack.ca> wrote:
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual As I recall even some of the bigger vendors such
as Sun and IBM didn't
offer ditroff in their base OS, but they did offer old troff. Those
were the days of insane AT&T licensing and all the games competitors
played around it.
As I recall, AT&T wanted about the same amount of money for ditroff as
for the entire UNIX release. So, of course no UNIX vendor was going to
double the royalty they paid to AT&T for every customer, for a small
improvement in a utility that most customers didn't even use (troff).
John
--
9:19 a.m.
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Actually It was very cheap. $5 a copy if I remember
correctly
We may both be right. The AT&T license to sell binary copies of UNIX
might have cost Sun only $5 per copy. Microsoft's Xenix license was
similar; it probably got down to $1 or 50c per copy. The price per copy
went steeply down as you sold more copies; the licenses soaked the small
sellers and catered to the large volume sellers. After all, it cost
AT&T *nothing* for a company to sell twice or ten times as many copies;
they weren't supporting the software anyway.
As I recall, when Microsoft supplied the OS for the TRS-80 Model 16,
they blew the doors off all the tiers in their UNIX license. The 16B
sold 40,000 copies in 1984 (according to Wikipedia), making it the
highest volume UNIX computer of the year. Clueless monopolist business
people at AT&T had never anticipated that ANYBODY would sell 40,000
copies of UNIX. Remember when IBM estimated in 1943, "I think there is
a world market for maybe five computers" and DEC in 1977 said "There is
no reason anyone would want a computer in their home"? See:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/155984/worst_tech_predictions.html
After the first few years, Sun was shipping high volumes of UNIX systems
(tens or hundreds of thousands per year). For many years they didn't
need any of the later USL licenses, because they shipped a BSD UNIX that
they were maintaining themselves, and that was (in many peoples'
opinions) higher quality software than anything that USL was offering.
The licensing for the ancient 32V license they needed was written back
in the days when shipping 100 copies was a big deal, so the prices at
the 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 copy tiers were very cheap. Adding 1c to
ship ditroff rather than troff might have been reasonable, but not $5!
John
6:58 p.m.
Ditroff per cpu was cheap. I was part of all those negotiation. There
was a buy in that way high and John points out. Actually there were two -
one to get the sources for your first internal cpu and another for the
redistribution rights.
My memory of the first license for the original ditroff 1.0 typesetter was
5k (which included the new C compiler) although it did drop later when it
went into the toolchest. But There was also redistribution fee also which
iirc you worked off / creditted against like license fees.
The entire v7 OS redistribution fee was on the 50-100k range (I've
forgotten but am likely to have that in my att files somewhete) - which was
after the 25k single cpu source license. The original binary per cpu
redistribution license started at 1.5k. Which when a minicomputer was
selling at 150k was not terrible. The problem was a PC at 5k.
I was in the room at Riki's Hyatt in Palo Alti when that was all
negotiated. This would lead to the Sys III license. It was at that MTG
Gates famous looked at the rest of us and said "you guys don't get it. The
only thing that matters is volume". He wanted to pay $50/copy max.
Anyway troff was much cheaper than the whole OS license. The per cpu
charge was very small as I said my memory is it was $5 over the base OS
license.
On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 8:25 PM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Actually It was very cheap. $5 a copy if I remember
correctly Masscomp
and Stellar just ate the cost. The adobe transcript license was also
nominal. In both cases we realized it was cheaper than trying to keep two
separate streams and figure out which systems we shipped it too.
On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 7:26 PM John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> wrote:
--
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
Greg A. Woods <woods(a)robohack.ca> wrote:
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
As I recall even some of the bigger vendors such
as Sun and IBM didn't
offer ditroff in their base OS, but they did offer old troff. Those
were the days of insane AT&T licensing and all the games competitors
played around it.
As I recall, AT&T wanted about the same amount of money for ditroff as
for the entire UNIX release. So, of course no UNIX vendor was going to
double the royalty they paid to AT&T for every customer, for a small
improvement in a utility that most customers didn't even use (troff).
John
-- 
4:39 a.m.
At least from Ninth Edition I think; that's where I first saw
it (code brought back to Sydney University by someone who had
worked at the labs).
On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 5:07 AM Nemo Nusquam <cym224(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 07/26/20 11:31, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote (in part):
2. Is there a way to build postscript directly on
the system?
Likely not.
When was dpost born?
N.
11:31 a.m.
Nemo Nusquam <cym224(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 07/26/20 11:31, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote (in part):
Eighth Edition, as part of ditroff. It wouldn't help on 2.11BSD anyway,
as dpost reads the ascii intermediate form from ditroff, not the C/A/T
typesetter codes from original troff.
Arnold
2. Is there a way to build postscript directly on
the system?
Likely not.
When was dpost born?
N. 
3:19 p.m.
When was dpost
born?
N.
Eighth Edition, as part of ditroff. It wouldn't help on 2.11BSD anyway,
as dpost reads the ascii intermediate form from ditroff, not the C/A/T
typesetter codes from original troff. 
5:07 p.m.
Jaap Akkerhuis <jaapna(a)xs4all.nl> writes:
I don't know when it was born. It came from the Documentors Work
Bench (DWB). The DWB used various to create the appropriate font
tables using the target postscript interpreter the fonts were used.
As far as I know, dpost and these tools were created by Rich Drechsler.
jaap
I don't know when it was born either, but I do know that there was a
port of it to a Vax running System V at 6200 Broad Street where I worked
in the late 90s. It is highly likely it was actually a port of DWB
running on the Vax, but I could not tell you for sure. We had to use it
to get working output for one of the printers we had.
--
Brad Spencer - brad(a)anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org
When was dpost born?
N.
Eighth Edition, as part of ditroff. It wouldn't help on 2.11BSD anyway,
as dpost reads the ascii intermediate form from ditroff, not the C/A/T
typesetter codes from original troff.
9:58 p.m.
On 7/26/20 10:31 AM, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Arnold,
Thanks. This is next up on the to try list.
Will
--
GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF
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
26 Jul
26 Jul
9:33 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 10:58 AM Will Senn <will.senn(a)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 resulted in cannot adjust line and cannot
break line errors and groff -Tps -ms nroff.out > 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
27 Jul
27 Jul
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
--
GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF
12:09 a.m.
On 7/26/20 7:56 AM, Will Senn 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.
Did anyone ever make Type 1 fonts for the C/A/T or Berkeley Versatec plotter fonts?
1423
days inactive
1609
days old
20 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
Al Kossow -
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Brad Spencer -
Clem Cole -
Greg A. Woods -
Jaap Akkerhuis -
John Gilmore -
Larry McVoy -
Nemo Nusquam -
Noel Hunt -
Will Senn