Re: [groff] 1976 version of CSTR #54 (Nroff/Troff User's Manual by Ossanna)

[John Gardner]

>
>
> *It has its own private implementation of the mm macros and groff gets**pretty
> unhappy when the trap macros start mutually calling each other.*


You should typeset them with the original Osanna troff(1), and see how they
look. ;-)

If you don't have an antique C/A/T/ on-hand, or know any museum owners with
one that works, you can use this utility
<https://github.com/Alhadis/Roff.js/blob/9f4c65cd8efe081bd3888e19817b25889f9b2bb5/bin/cat2dit>
to convert the output of ancient (pre-dit) troff into Groff's intermediate
output:

$ troff -man ./m0a > out.cat
$ cat2dit -Tps < out.cat | grops > out.ps

Still has some rough edges I haven't smoothed out yet. Namely, I need to
implement manual page-breaking because the C/A/T/ didn't have an
instruction for "start new page". :-( It just keeps moving downwards until
it begins printing the next page.

I assume the C/A/T was fed a continuous reel of paper or something that was
cut into separate pages by hand afterwards...

I've attached a PDF of Unix v7's man page for troff(1), typeset by the same
program it's documenting, then converted and upscaled by cat2dit(1) before
being piped to grops(1).

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019 at 01:20, G. Branden Robinson <
address@hidden> wrote:

> At 2019-07-03T00:46:32+1000, John Gardner wrote:
> > > *I was trying to get the 1976 edition of CSTR #54 to typeset the
> > > other evening*
> >
> > Where did you manage to get hold of that? I was under the impression that
> > the source code of CSTR #54 was long lost to the sands of time... :|
>
> https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/doc/troff
>
> If there's a PostScript or PDF version of the Web, Google doesn't seem
> to know about it.
>
> A few lines of hacking get it mostly working, but there are problems
> with the page traps when the document goes into two-column mode.
>
> It has its own private implementation of the mm macros and groff gets
> pretty unhappy when the trap macros start mutually calling each other.
>
> I'm attaching a diff with my fixup hacks to date.
>
> Regards,
> Branden
>

v7-troff.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document