RE: [Groff] Groff editor.

[Karee, Srinivas]

This file does not contain any pics, it has some tables, I can covert it
to ascii (-Tascii) and show to the users. But my requirement is for user
to edit the file and I should able to save it back in groff format and
use user edited (groff file) file for printing on the PS printer and
sending fax.

Basically I cannot lose bold/italic/font and other stuff. I am new to
groff, so I thought there could be some tools which I could buy and
workout this requirement, but looks like there are no tools out there
which I can use.

Srini.


-----Original Message-----
From: Meg McRoberts [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 2:03 PM
To: Karee, Srinivas; Clarke Echols
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: RE: [Groff] Groff editor.

What sort of document is this?  Is it mostly text or are there
a lot of tables, graphics, and such?

I can think of a few ways that one might get the content into
some sort of WYSIWYG editor, but the fancier the formatting,
the less satisfactory these will be:

- Run the text into formatted ASCII then import the formatted text
  into Word or some other editor.  A command similar to the following
  might work:

  groff -mandoc -stC -Tascii <filename>| col -b > <filename>.txt

  This is for man page source -- replace -mandoc with the appropriate
  string if the document is using a different set of macros.

  You will loose all bold/italic and lots of other stuff but it will
  get you text that does not show the formatting characters.

- Run the text into PDF and then try a PDF editor.  I know that
Broderbund
  is selling such an editor but I haven't used it.  The following
commands
  will create PDF from a groff file (these are the commands I use --
perhaps
  someone will have a more elegant method) -- note that you have to
create
  a PostScript file and then convert the ps file to PDF:

  groff -mandoc -st <filename> > <filename>.ps
  ps2pdf <filename>.ps <filename>.pdf

- Convert the groff code to Docbook/XML; editors like you want are
available
  for XML.  Here is some information about a tool that does this:

  http://www.xmlhack.com/read.php?item=1749

These are not perfect solutions but would allow you to capture the text
into a format that can be maintained without learning groff.  

meg