[doug@cs.dartmouth.edu: [Groff] groff to RTF or Word]

[doug@cs.dartmouth.edu: [Groff] groff to RTF or Word]

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi,

i have to share this, even though it's arguable mildly off topic,
but then again, not that much.  This is among the most hilarious
postings i have seen in some time.  Or rather, you don't know whether
you should feel like laughing - or crying.

I mean, requesting a paper by Malcolm Douglas McIlroy for a journal,
than telling him that you accept "any kind of digital text--as
long as it's Word or RTF"?  Oh boy!

In case anybody can help him, please do so, and thank him for
writing runoff - and for his major contributions to AT&T Unix.
But to be frank, i have very little hope for his case.

Maybe he should just drop Bill Gates a mail and kindly ask him,
as his younger colleague, who is in part clearly building on his,
Doug's, work, whether he can quickly hack up four small preprocessor
scripts for him, taking tbl(7), eqn(7), pic(7), and roff(7) input,
that he can use as as filters to pipe into MS Word...

Yours,
  Ingo


P.S.
For more background, see
  http://manpages.bsd.lv/history.html
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McIlroy


----- Forwarded message from Doug McIlroy -----

From: Doug McIlroy <doug at cs dot dartmouth dot edu>
Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:35:36 -0500
To: groff@gnu.org
Subject: [Groff] groff to RTF or Word

I have a paper composed in notrivial groff (uses pic,
eqn, tbl, and .PSPIC), which I'd like to submit to a
journal that takes any kind of digital text--as
long as it's Word or RTF.  I haven't been able to find
any tool that offers much help in getting from here to 
there. I'd be delighted if somebody could tell me I 
missed something capable.

Doug McIlroy

----- End forwarded message -----
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Re: [doug@cs.dartmouth.edu: [Groff] groff to RTF or Word]

[Kristaps Dzonsons]

> i have to share this, even though it's arguable mildly off topic,
> but then again, not that much.  This is among the most hilarious
> postings i have seen in some time.  Or rather, you don't know whether
> you should feel like laughing - or crying.
>
> I mean, requesting a paper by Malcolm Douglas McIlroy for a journal,
> than telling him that you accept "any kind of digital text--as
> long as it's Word or RTF"?  Oh boy!
>
> In case anybody can help him, please do so, and thank him for
> writing runoff - and for his major contributions to AT&T Unix.
> But to be frank, i have very little hope for his case.
>
> Maybe he should just drop Bill Gates a mail and kindly ask him,
> as his younger colleague, who is in part clearly building on his,
> Doug's, work, whether he can quickly hack up four small preprocessor
> scripts for him, taking tbl(7), eqn(7), pic(7), and roff(7) input,
> that he can use as as filters to pipe into MS Word...

I saw this too and it's quite silly -- I wonder which journal?  I guess 
most non-scientific journals (and magazines, of course) accept strange 
formats like that... Ingo, maybe it's time for a -Tdocx output mode? ;) 
  (I wonder if this is possible... if we had a -Txml, which would be 
pretty easy, then you could translate--gah!  No!)

Doug was a great help for the manpages history -- he even took the time 
to scan some of his original roff and runoff manuals (you can find them 
in the 1969 runoff section).

Speaking of which, it'd be neat to have an adjoining mini-project for 
manpage utilities.  Ingo, I know you've also been digging around 1BSD 
and 2BSD... I wonder if Bill Joy would field some questions about the 
origins of man(1)?  (And why are the BSD manpages suffixed in .u?)  In 
fact, I can find a man shellscript in PWB/UNIX-1.0 (1977) and then 1BSD 
as C souce (1978).  I wonder who wrote the Very First Version?

Best,

Kristaps
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Re: [doug@cs.dartmouth.edu: [Groff] groff to RTF or Word]

[Jukka Ruohonen]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2012 at 12:01:51PM +0100, Kristaps Dzonsons wrote:
> >I mean, requesting a paper by Malcolm Douglas McIlroy for a journal,
> >than telling him that you accept "any kind of digital text--as
> >long as it's Word or RTF"?  Oh boy!
> >
> I saw this too and it's quite silly -- I wonder which journal?  I guess 
> most non-scientific journals (and magazines, of course) accept strange 
> formats like that... Ingo, maybe it's time for a -Tdocx output mode? ;) 
>  (I wonder if this is possible... if we had a -Txml, which would be 
> pretty easy, then you could translate--gah!  No!)

Just a reality check. Are you seriously suggesting that a non-trivial amount
of journals still accept roff & co.? No offence, but get over it: sad as it
may be, even majority of computer geeks can't use it, if they ever could.

- Jukka.
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