troff to postscript conversion

[Chris Lewis]

In article <5473 at trantor.harris-atd.com> ferguson at x102c.ess.harris.com (ferguson ct 71078) writes:

>From: tcurrey at x102a (currey tom 76327)

>You might want to check out a program called "psroff".

>it is on   Machine : uunet.uu.net
>	   file    : pub/psroff*

>There are several files here.

>		Hope this helps
>		Tom Currey
>		tcurrey at elvis.ess.harris.com

>----------------------------------------------------------------------

>From: Russ Evans <E_GS18 at vaxa.nerc-murchison.ac.uk>

>I assume you're on Unix.  (Someone posted a response about MS-DOS, which 
>sounds a little unlikely).  The answer depends on whether your troff is
>the ancient CAT troff or the newer ditroff stuff.  Find out by trying to
>invoke troff.  If it comes back with a message about 'Typesetter busy', 
>you've got CAT troff.  You want to get a copy of Chris Lewis's excellent
>psroff, version 2 patchlevel 7.  Patchlevel 5 was distributed in 
>comp.sources.unix recently, and can be obtained from uunet.  Patch 6 deals
>with Ultrix/RISC (I helped Chris on that stuff) and patch 7 tidies up a few
>loose ends.  Patchlevel 5 will probably work fine for you.  If necessary,
>you can get the patches from Chris - I don't have his address handy, but 
>it's in the distribution files.  

Thanks Russ ;-)  It is important to disambiguate whether you have CAT
troff or ditroff before searching for a troff->postscript converter.
Russ's remarks are correct.

I'd just like to caution everyone that if they wish to obtain psroff,
they make sure that they do NOT get the version of psroff under the
comp.sources.unix archives on uunet.  Tom's information is correct,
the latest version is under ~ftp/pub/psroff/*.

Most people asking me for help have ended up with psroff 1.0 PL0 from
uunet's comp.sources.unix archives.  Which has a number of problems, not
least being that since comp.sources.unix was defunct during the time,
that uunet has none of the patches for it.  Psroff 2.0 is FAR superior
to 1.0.

I've arranged with uunet (thanks to Kyle Jones) to ensure that
they have the latest version (psroff 2.0), but for historical reasons,
they are keeping the original (very old) version.  I've asked them to drop
a README into the comp.sources.unix version suggesting that it is
the wrong one to get with a pointer to the correct one.

If you have ditroff, on the other hand, the simplest solution is
to obtain tpscript aka ditroff2ps, which should also be on uunet.
tpscript works well, it has a few minor problems that are
corrected in psroff - though the released version of psroff does
not support ditroff.

If you have Pageview, or the xditview or the xtroff utilities from
the contrib directory (all under X windows), you can also preview
psroff output on your terminal.  (Anybody attempting to use
pageview should contact me, I have a fix that hasn't been distributed
yet)

If you have neither version of troff, or need capabilities beyond
CAT troff (more than 4 fonts mounted simultaneously, or the extensible
character set), you'd probably be best off with groff if you can
find disk space, G++ and enough time to kick at it enough.

And finally, the development version of psroff 2.0 does currently
support ditroff input.  This will be made available on the net
as psroff 3.0 as soon as it's reasonably well tested and some of
the ancilliary issues (width tables, documentation etc) are worked out.
Other added features include width tables for LJIII's, an extensible
character set for CAT troff, and perhaps even full drawing support
for CATs.

If people are interested, I'll post the psroff 2.0 "advertising"
blurb.
-- 
Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541, Internet: clewis at ferret.ocunix.on.ca
UUCP: uunet!mitel!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis; Ferret Mailing List:
(ferret-request at eci386); Psroff (not Adobe Transcript) enquiries:
psroff-request at eci386, current patchlevel is *7*.