[9fans] troff bug?

[9fans] troff bug?

[hugo rivera]

Hi,
I have written a couple of documents using plan 9's troff utility, but
it can be safely assured that I am a troff newbie.
Now I have to write some sort of manual, and I am using eqn(1) to
write all the formulas and equations, but I ran into trouble as soon
as I had to write a ≥ character.
First of all I tried the eqn(1) approach, using something like $>= 1$
or $"" >= 1$ with $$ as delimiters. It did not work and produces a 'g
1' in the ps output. After a couple of attempts I decided not to use
the eqn(1) approach and I moved to just the troff syntax, so I wrote
'\(<= 1' to get the character, but no success, the output is still 'g
1'. Finally I remembered UTF so I just wrote '≥1', but again it
failed, but this time with no output at all. Is this a bug in troff?
and for me it raises a bigger question, isn't plan 9 and its utilities
supposed to support UTF-8?
Note that the command I am using is

9 eqn manual.ms | 9 troff -ms | tr2post > manual.ps

I think that this is probably a bug in plan9's troff (or maybe I am
doing something wrong) since with groff

eqn manual.ms | groff -ms -Tps > manual.ps

works just fine with the eqn(1) aproach and with the troff aproach.

-- 
Saludos

Hugo

Re: [9fans] troff bug?

[erik quanstrom]

> I think that this is probably a bug in plan9's troff (or maybe I am
> doing something wrong) since with groff
>
> eqn manual.ms | groff -ms -Tps > manual.ps
>
> works just fine with the eqn(1) aproach and with the troff aproach.

you seem to be missing "psfonts" in your pipeline, unexpectedly
adding it did not correct my output.  (i get "g g e".  definately using
the wrong font.)  also there seem to be some font confusions, too,
as nroff produces this incorrect output:

	; echo '≥ $>=$ \(>='|9 eqn -d^'$$'|9 nroff | sed 1q
	≥ > >

on plan 9 this produces

	; echo '≥ $>=$ \(>='|eqn -d^'$$'|nroff | sed 1q
	≥ ≧ ≧

the troff -> ps output looks fine, too.

- erik

Re: [9fans] troff bug?

[Russ Cox]

> you seem to be missing "psfonts" in your pipeline, unexpectedly
> adding it did not correct my output.  (i get "g g e".  definately using
> the wrong font.)  also there seem to be some font confusions, too,
> as nroff produces this incorrect output:
>
>        ; echo '≥ $>=$ \(>='|9 eqn -d^'$$'|9 nroff | sed 1q
>        ≥ > >

not as incorrect as it appears on first glance.

$ echo '≥ $>=$ \(>=' | 9 eqn -d'$$' | 9 nroff | sed 1q | xd -c
0000000  e2 89 a5     _ \b  >     _ \b  > \n
000000c
$

russ

Re: [9fans] troff bug?

[erik quanstrom]

> >        ; echo '≥ $>=$ \(>='|9 eqn -d^'$$'|9 nroff | sed 1q
> >        ≥ > >
>
> not as incorrect as it appears on first glance.
>
> $ echo '≥ $>=$ \(>=' | 9 eqn -d'$$' | 9 nroff | sed 1q | xd -c
> 0000000  e2 89 a5     _ \b  >     _ \b  > \n
> 000000c
> $

on the other hand, appearance is the only reason
to use troff over plain text.  :-)

- erik