Re: [9fans] Postscript and troff

[Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>]

Via http://ftp.cs.stanford.edu/tex/texhax/texhax89.088
So only for -ms or -man.  bwk's way may be better for your purpose.

+----
| Date: Fri, 22 Sep 89 12:30:59 PDT
| From: Phil Farrell <farrell@erebus.Stanford.EDU>
| Subject: Re: TeX, troff, man pages
| Keywords: TeX, troff, man pages
|
| In TeXhax vol 89, issue 85, William LeFebvre says:
| > I've often thought of implementing the troff man macros in TeX.  If
| > that were done, then one could just TeX-off the printed form whenever
| > desired but still have "nroff -man" for the man command.  So what's
| > needed?  First, we need to define "(newline)." as the equivalent of an
| > escape character.  Any takers?
|
| There is another existing way to do this.  The UNIX TeX distribution includes
| a contributed program tr2tex from a former student here at Stanford that
| can convert troff manuscripts that use either -ms or -man macros to LaTeX
| documents.  It doesn't do a perfect job for complicated troff constructions,
| but the simple macros normally used in man pages come through just fine.
|
| This isn't the real answer for replacing troff with TeX on UNIX systems
| because it still requires that you keep nroff around and it still requires
| that you know the -man macros for writing man pages.  What I think is
| needed is a combination of a LaTeX style option that forces the output
| to use a constant-width font and constant line spacing, etc; plus a
| dvi interpreter that can reproduce such a restricted output on a normal
| terminal screen.  For the fairly simple documents that are used as on-line
| documentation (no math and only simple tables that can be done with tabs)
| this would allow regular typesetting via LaTeX for printed copies, but
| also permit viewing on a normal dumb terminal by including the special
| style option and processing through the special dvi interpreter.  I am
| afraid, however, that this would be a rather large project to undertake
| and unfortunately can never imagine having the time to do it myself.
|
| Phil Farrell, Computer Systems Manager
| Stanford University School of Earth Sciences
| farrell@erebus.stanford.edu
+----


On Thu, 04 May 2017 22:41:57 PDT Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:
> https://bima.astro.umd.edu/nemo/man_html/tr2latex.l.html
>
> No idea how good it is though.
>
> On Fri, 05 May 2017 15:32:42 +1000 Bruce Ellis <bruce.ellis@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > bwk mentioned that TeX was unworkable for this situation. Maybe it's time
> > for another good TeX hack.
> >
> > :-) brucee
> >
> > On 5 May 2017 at 15:28, Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:
> >
> > > This is an opportunity for someone to implement troff macros in TeX.
> > > Then you can embed EPS easily!
> > >
> > > :-)
> > >
> > > On Fri, 05 May 2017 15:23:39 +1000 Bruce Ellis <bruce.ellis@gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I asked bwk - troff wizard, and to paraphrase him "there is no good
> > > > solution".
> > > >
> > > > There is the PSPIC macro in groff, but it generates huge files.
> > > >
> > > > For the latest book they used \X to embed markers and a go programs to
> > > > postprocess troff output.
> > > >
> > > > brucee
>