Re: [Groff] So ... where's the postscript file?

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi James,

That's a lot of questions;  you others on the list -- feel free to help
out :-)

> Thankyou very much, I am very grateful. I tried troff test.troff >
> test.ps but it didn't output a vaid PS file,

troff outputs a device independent description of what needs to be
printed.  You run a second program to turn this into whatever your
printer requires.  With GNU groff that's grops.  On AIX, for example,
with Kernighan's troff it's psc, `troff -Tps test.tr | psc >test.ps'.

> but it seems that's OK with groff, the GNU version.

Yes, groff, which is different from GNU troff, acts as a front end to
the other commands.  You can do `troff test.tr | grops >test.ps' if you
so wished but sticking with groff is probably easier.

> But anway, I am totally ignorant of these commands at the moment and
> still have some learning to do before I can get my book in the layout
> I want.
> 
> Is there a manual page for newbies for the other troff things, like
> pic, eqn, tbl, and the indexing tool? I'll reboot in Linux and take a
> look and hang out on this list and see if I can pick some things up.

Your best bet could be the Bell Labs papers written on these commands
copies of which can be found on Stevens' site.

    http://www.kohala.com/start/troff/troff.html

> Thanks for your help. :-) Oh by the way, is there a program for
> viewing postscript files on Windows?

For ones based on GhostScript, a PostScript interpreter, look at

    http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

> I have cygwin so I have groff and the others, and are there freely
> available macro packages hiding somewhere on GNU?

groff comes with implementations of the ms and mm macro packages
amongst others.

I'd suggest starting with some of the cstr* papers mentioned above and
seeing how you get on.


Ralph.