[9fans] plan9port troff no Greek letters

[9fans] plan9port troff no Greek letters

[Rudolf Sykora]

Hello,

my plan9 machine has broken down and I need to continue working.
I use troff with math. When I tried to typeset my text under plan9port
(instead of the native plan9) with

cat $stem.ms |9 pic|9 eqn|9 troff -ms|9 tr2post | 9 psfonts >$stem.ps

I can't see any Greek letters.
Is there sth. simple to do?

Thanks a lot!
Ruda

PS.: Does anyone of you know if it is possible to teach linux to read
unicode letters as plan9 does? I mean e.g. alt+*+a means alpha, etc.

Re: [9fans] plan9port troff no Greek letters

[EBo]

I had a similar problem with p9p, and I Was told to replace p9p's fonts
with those from a full Plan9 distribution.  Hope that helps.

  EBo --


On Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:46:37 +0200, Rudolf Sykora
<rudolf.sykora@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> my plan9 machine has broken down and I need to continue working.
> I use troff with math. When I tried to typeset my text under plan9port
> (instead of the native plan9) with
>
> cat $stem.ms |9 pic|9 eqn|9 troff -ms|9 tr2post | 9 psfonts >$stem.ps
>
> I can't see any Greek letters.
> Is there sth. simple to do?
>
> Thanks a lot!
> Ruda
>
> PS.: Does anyone of you know if it is possible to teach linux to read
> unicode letters as plan9 does? I mean e.g. alt+*+a means alpha, etc.

Re: [9fans] plan9port troff no Greek letters

[Russ Cox]

> my plan9 machine has broken down and I need to continue working.
> I use troff with math. When I tried to typeset my text under plan9port
> (instead of the native plan9) with
>
> cat $stem.ms |9 pic|9 eqn|9 troff -ms|9 tr2post | 9 psfonts >$stem.ps
>
> I can't see any Greek letters.
> Is there sth. simple to do?

Try using

.FP luxisans

at the top of your file.

> PS.: Does anyone of you know if it is possible to teach linux to read
> unicode letters as plan9 does? I mean e.g. alt+*+a means alpha, etc.

Yes.  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ComposeKey has some
information on the X11 Compose sequence mechanism.  I have
been meaning to prepare something in p9p to generate a config
that makes the X11 compose do exactly what p9p does (except
maybe the alt-X for spelling out Unicode by hex).  If you make
one, please post it.  mklatinkbd is probably a good start.

Russ

Re: [9fans] plan9port troff no Greek letters

[Rudolf Sykora]

>> I can't see any Greek letters.
>> Is there sth. simple to do?
>
> Try using
>
> .FP luxisans
>
> at the top of your file.

I tried this as soon as sb here mentioned your earlier post where you
had proposed the same: http://9fans.net/archive/2010/09/206
However, not better with it.
Btw., I observe the same problem as Eric Q, who found that
echo α '\(*a' | 9 troff -ms | page
doesn't draw the first alpha but does draw the second...

>> PS.: Does anyone of you know if it is possible to teach linux to read
>> unicode letters as plan9 does? I mean e.g. alt+*+a means alpha, etc.
>
> Yes.  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ComposeKey has some
> information on the X11 Compose sequence mechanism.  I have
> been meaning to prepare something in p9p to generate a config
> that makes the X11 compose do exactly what p9p does (except
> maybe the alt-X for spelling out Unicode by hex).  If you make
> one, please post it.  mklatinkbd is probably a good start.
>
> Russ

Thanks for the pointer!

Ruda

Re: [9fans] plan9port troff no Greek letters

[erik quanstrom]

> .FP luxisans
>
> at the top of your file.
>

	{echo .FP luxisans;echo echo αβδγ '\(*a\(*b\(*d\(*g'}|9 troff -ms|9 tr2post|9 psfonts

this did work, as long as i didn't use page.  page failed
in ghostscript misery.  an endless stream of

Current allocation mode is local
Current file position is 61
Error: /undefined in 9dda6bd211ae4bc894839b8901cb97177da94aedd3c4d0b00d8c2cffcb31
Operand stack:
[etc., same file position]

i used to think the port of gs to plan 9 had a few problems.
now i realize gs just stinks.

there has to be a better option than an 18mb executable that doesn't
work.

- erik

Re: [9fans] plan9port troff no Greek letters

[Tony Lainson]

Rudolf Sykora said:
> Does anyone of you know if it is possible to teach linux to read unicode letters as plan9 does?

Russ Cox said:
> ... generate a config that makes the X11 compose do exactly what p9p does ...

a python script that generates such a config, by Kris Maglione:
http://lists.suckless.org/dev/0910/1902.html

Re: [9fans] plan9port troff no Greek letters

[erik quanstrom]

<rudolf.sykora@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> my plan9 machine has broken down and I need to continue working.
> I use troff with math. When I tried to typeset my text under plan9port
> (instead of the native plan9) with
>
> cat $stem.ms |9 pic|9 eqn|9 troff -ms|9 tr2post | 9 psfonts >$stem.ps
>
> I can't see any Greek letters.
> Is there sth. simple to do?

good question.  there seems to be something wrong with the troff
setup on p9p, at least on my machine

	echo αβδγ '\(*a' | 9 troff -ms | page
looks something like
	±²³ αβ
on my machine, so it doesn't appear to be a font problem, it appears
to be a mapping problem.

perhaps you could work around with

	... | sed 's/α/\(*a/g
		...
		s/Ω/\(*W/g' | ...

i thought this used to work, but my c.a. 1995 executable has the same
problem.  and since troff does the right thing natively on my 32-bit
rune system, it's not a 32-bit rune problem.

> PS.: Does anyone of you know if it is possible to teach linux to read
> unicode letters as plan9 does? I mean e.g. alt+*+a means alpha, etc.

i've been using utf-8 on unix since ~1992.  sam, 9term and the no-longer
new acme do a fine job.  in the old days, there were few problems at all
with this (execept for the occasional grep snafu).  now that unix tools are
so much "smarter", it's harder to outwit them but it still works pretty well.

the good news is we have replacements in the form of p9p programs.
the bad news is you have to remember to use them.  and there's always
the question of which grep are you running where.

- erik