What is a pic

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <698 at cromemco.UUCP> tomsu at cromemco.UUCP (Tom Cumming) writes:
>I have some "troff" documentation that needs to run through a "pic"
>pre-processor. What is pic, where does it hail from, and is it possible
>to get a copy somehow?

"pic" is one of a set of troff preprocessors that interpret "small languages"
for specialized purposes, in this case for diagram drawing.  Others include
"eqn" for conveniently specifying mathematical equations, "tbl" for tables,
and "grap" for convenient production of graphs.  The typesetting instructions
produced by these language processors may be imbedded within larger troff
documents.  All the processors I mentioned are available in AT&T's
Documenter's WorkBench (DWB) software package, licensed by AT&T and offered
under sublicensing arrangements by various software houses that specialize
in computer typesetting, Elan and SoftQuad being two that I happen to know
about (but there are others).  A few vendors such as SGI offer DWB as an
option for their UNIX-based systems.

AT&T software licensing information can be obtained from (800)828-UNIX.