[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Cory Smelosky]

All,

Does anyone have SunOS 4 documentation?

I am trying to properly configure UUCP and I am unable to find proper
documentation.

-- 
  Cory Smelosky
  b4 at gewt.net

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Cory Smelosky]

Found it.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/sun/sunos/4.1/800-3805-10A_System_and_Network_Administration_199003.pdf

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017, at 14:54, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> All,
> 
> Does anyone have SunOS 4 documentation?
> 
> I am trying to properly configure UUCP and I am unable to find proper
> documentation.
> 
> -- 
>   Cory Smelosky
>   b4 at gewt.net


-- 
  Cory Smelosky
  b4 at gewt.net

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Larry McVoy]

All done in troff I believe.  Though not for long, I think they switched 
to framemaker around then.

Whoops, I'm wrong, I looked, that's clearly framemaker.  Sigh.  I love me
some troff, even to this day.  I really really really wish that someone 
had done framemaker, word, whatever, that was the GUI interface that had
troff under the covers.  Why?  Because you can version control the source
and diffs will actually make sense.  Best of luck doing that with any
GUI editor.

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 03:55:30PM -0700, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> Found it.
> 
> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/sun/sunos/4.1/800-3805-10A_System_and_Network_Administration_199003.pdf
> 
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017, at 14:54, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> > All,
> > 
> > Does anyone have SunOS 4 documentation?
> > 
> > I am trying to properly configure UUCP and I am unable to find proper
> > documentation.
> > 
> > -- 
> >   Cory Smelosky
> >   b4 at gewt.net
> 
> 
> -- 
>   Cory Smelosky
>   b4 at gewt.net

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-12 7:31 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> All done in troff I believe.  Though not for long, I think they switched
> to framemaker around then.
>
> Whoops, I'm wrong, I looked, that's clearly framemaker.  Sigh.  I love me
> some troff, even to this day.  I really really really wish that someone
> had done framemaker, word, whatever, that was the GUI interface that had
> troff under the covers.  Why?  Because you can version control the source

You can get really really close to that dream with TeX based tools like 
LyX, etc (and indeed Blue Sky Research had a wysiwyg TeX system back in 
the late 1980s).

While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and 
exacting typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am afraid.

--Toby
(typesetter/typographer/TeX porter)

> and diffs will actually make sense.  Best of luck doing that with any
> GUI editor.
>
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 03:55:30PM -0700, Cory Smelosky wrote:
>> Found it.
>>
>> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/sun/sunos/4.1/800-3805-10A_System_and_Network_Administration_199003.pdf
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017, at 14:54, Cory Smelosky wrote:
>>> All,
>>>
>>> Does anyone have SunOS 4 documentation?
>>>
>>> I am trying to properly configure UUCP and I am unable to find proper
>>> documentation.
>>>
>>> --
>>>   Cory Smelosky
>>>   b4 at gewt.net
>>
>>
>> --
>>   Cory Smelosky
>>   b4 at gewt.net
>

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Steve Nickolas]

On Wed, 12 Apr 2017, Toby Thain wrote:

> You can get really really close to that dream with TeX based tools like LyX, 
> etc (and indeed Blue Sky Research had a wysiwyg TeX system back in the late 
> 1980s).
>
> While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and exacting 
> typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am afraid.

Heh, yeah. I'd defy anyone to typeset a Bible with troff, but I did it 
reasonably well with XeLaTeX.

-uso.

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-12 10:16 PM, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Apr 2017, Toby Thain wrote:
>
>> You can get really really close to that dream with TeX based tools
>> like LyX, etc (and indeed Blue Sky Research had a wysiwyg TeX system
>> back in the late 1980s).
>>
>> While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and
>> exacting typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am
>> afraid.
>
> Heh, yeah. I'd defy anyone to typeset a Bible with troff, but I did it
> reasonably well with XeLaTeX.

I did a 400+ page novel in it once. This had a few benefits. One was 
that the same markup could generate double spaced typewriter-style 
printouts for the novelist to bind and scribble his corrections on, 
while at the same time producing the final plate-ready negatives for the 
printer.

Sadly I'm not called much to use it any more but it's a tangible 
pleasure when I do.

(Although I have to say that I don't like CMR much.)

--T

>
> -uso.
>

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Nemo]

On 12 April 2017 at 22:25, Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote
(in part):
[...]
> I did a 400+ page novel in it once.

Tanenbaum wrote all his tomes in troff, praising it in his prefaces,
and it comes
with MacOS (bit of an amusement, that).

N.

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1548 bytes --]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 10:25:02PM -0400, Toby Thain wrote:
> On 2017-04-12 10:16 PM, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> > On Wed, 12 Apr 2017, Toby Thain wrote:
> > 
> > > You can get really really close to that dream with TeX based tools
> > > like LyX, etc (and indeed Blue Sky Research had a wysiwyg TeX system
> > > back in the late 1980s).
> > > 
> > > While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and
> > > exacting typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am
> > > afraid.
> > 
> > Heh, yeah. I'd defy anyone to typeset a Bible with troff, but I did it
> > reasonably well with XeLaTeX.
> 
> I did a 400+ page novel in it once. This had a few benefits. One was that
> the same markup could generate double spaced typewriter-style printouts for
> the novelist to bind and scribble his corrections on, while at the same time
> producing the final plate-ready negatives for the printer.
> 
> Sadly I'm not called much to use it any more but it's a tangible pleasure
> when I do.
> 
> (Although I have to say that I don't like CMR much.)
> 
> --T


Hi all,

Some years ago, I did part of the proof-reading for the UTP revival
project (UTP = the book "Unix Text Processing", the original sources of
the book were sadly lost) since I happened to own a copy of the book
itself and quite enjoyed using troff for all sorts of things.

If anyone's interested, I believe the final product (PDf and sources)
may be found at

    ftp://ftp.ffii.org/pub/groff/contrib/documentation/utp/


Regards,
Kusalananda (Andreas Kähäri)

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-12 10:25 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
> On 2017-04-12 10:16 PM, Steve Nickolas wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Apr 2017, Toby Thain wrote:
>>
>>> You can get really really close to that dream with TeX based tools
>>> like LyX, etc (and indeed Blue Sky Research had a wysiwyg TeX system
>>> back in the late 1980s).
>>>
>>> While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and
>>> exacting typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am
>>> afraid.
>>
>> Heh, yeah. I'd defy anyone to typeset a Bible with troff, but I did it
>> reasonably well with XeLaTeX.
>
> I did a 400+ page novel in it once. This had a few benefits. One was

Since it was a bit unclear from context: I'm referring to TeX here and 
below.

> that the same markup could generate double spaced typewriter-style
> printouts for the novelist to bind and scribble his corrections on,
> while at the same time producing the final plate-ready negatives for the
> printer.
>
> Sadly I'm not called much to use it any more but it's a tangible
> pleasure when I do.
>
> (Although I have to say that I don't like CMR much.)
>
> --T
>
>>
>> -uso.
>>
>
>

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 10:13:33PM -0400, Toby Thain wrote:
> On 2017-04-12 7:31 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> >All done in troff I believe.  Though not for long, I think they switched
> >to framemaker around then.
> >
> >Whoops, I'm wrong, I looked, that's clearly framemaker.  Sigh.  I love me
> >some troff, even to this day.  I really really really wish that someone
> >had done framemaker, word, whatever, that was the GUI interface that had
> >troff under the covers.  Why?  Because you can version control the source
> 
> You can get really really close to that dream with TeX based tools like LyX,
> etc (and indeed Blue Sky Research had a wysiwyg TeX system back in the late
> 1980s).

I know, my dad wrote a book with Blue Sky Research's stuff.

> While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and exacting
> typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am afraid.

I'd like to learn more about that.  I'd done a ton of stuff in troff,
had to do a paper recently in LaTex and I did not find it at all better.
It was a technical paper, usual stuff, text and tables and figures
and references.  I'm not great at LaTex so maybe it's just my bias
but I really like troff.  In fairness, I like groff, I got James to hack
some stuff into pic for me.  

But it started with troff.  I still remember walking out of the computer
science bookstore with a copy of the troff manual.  That was sort of my
introduction to Unix and it fits.

> --Toby
> (typesetter/typographer/TeX porter)
> 
> >and diffs will actually make sense.  Best of luck doing that with any
> >GUI editor.
> >
> >On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 03:55:30PM -0700, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> >>Found it.
> >>
> >>http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/sun/sunos/4.1/800-3805-10A_System_and_Network_Administration_199003.pdf
> >>
> >>On Wed, Apr 12, 2017, at 14:54, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> >>>All,
> >>>
> >>>Does anyone have SunOS 4 documentation?
> >>>
> >>>I am trying to properly configure UUCP and I am unable to find proper
> >>>documentation.
> >>>
> >>>--
> >>>  Cory Smelosky
> >>>  b4 at gewt.net
> >>
> >>
> >>--
> >>  Cory Smelosky
> >>  b4 at gewt.net
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
 |On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 10:13:33PM -0400, Toby Thain wrote:
 |> On 2017-04-12 7:31 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
 |>>All done in troff I believe.  Though not for long, I think they switched
 |>>to framemaker around then.
 |>>
 |>>Whoops, I'm wrong, I looked, that's clearly framemaker.  Sigh.  I love me
 |>>some troff, even to this day.  I really really really wish that someone
 |>>had done framemaker, word, whatever, that was the GUI interface that had
 |>>troff under the covers.  Why?  Because you can version control the source
 |> 
 |> You can get really really close to that dream with TeX based tools \
 |> like LyX,
 |> etc (and indeed Blue Sky Research had a wysiwyg TeX system back in \
 |> the late
 |> 1980s).
 |
 |I know, my dad wrote a book with Blue Sky Research's stuff.
 |
 |> While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and \
 |> exacting
 |> typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am afraid.
 |
 |I'd like to learn more about that.  I'd done a ton of stuff in troff,
 |had to do a paper recently in LaTex and I did not find it at all better.
 |It was a technical paper, usual stuff, text and tables and figures
 |and references.  I'm not great at LaTex so maybe it's just my bias
 |but I really like troff.  In fairness, I like groff, I got James to hack
 |some stuff into pic for me.  
 |
 |But it started with troff.  I still remember walking out of the computer
 |science bookstore with a copy of the troff manual.  That was sort of my
 |introduction to Unix and it fits.

To me that was the german translation of ISO C, by Prof. Dr. A.-T.
Schreiner and Dr. Ernst Janich, "set in pic (by Kernighan), tbl (by
Lesk), eqn (by Kernighan and Cherry), a XENIC-fit device-
independent troff by ELAN".  Except for being afraid the wonderful
introduction could, possibly and maybe, today have been
collaborated in Google Doc, i also adore roff.

I came via (La, then) TeX and a package i have written myself, and
of which i was very proud, and because i could be.  Unfortunately
this has been lost, in major parts.  I came to roff myself because
of this apocalypse -- you know, i come from C64, DOS, Windows,
HTML, Javascript and perl, over the German (for me: ex-) magazine
c't to Linux, JAVA, C++, x86 Assembler and then C, which is likely
and maybe unfortunately so completely different to all of you, and
during the JAVA time i bought the TeX book, the c't has had
articles about TeX, quite often so, so i knew about it.  (I tried
lout for a short time, first, but it was not flexible enough.)
Unfortunately roff has had no promoters in Germany at all, in
anything i read.

Roff has weaknesses due to its by-line layout mode, compared to
TeX's by-paragraph and even by-page (visible white) one.  (Note
i have no idea of what happened on the TeX side in the last, say,
about 15 years.  TeXLive has always been too large for me, i have
the KerTeX basics laying around since a few years, just in case
i ever find time to come back to TeX.)  This can be a problem for
quick use cases that do not allow proper reviews and fine-tuning,
the latter sometimes down to the paragraph level, dependent on the
material.  In TeX this can be tuned more easily with conservative
values and looking out for "overfull boxes" (iirc), if such occur
at all, then.

My finding is that, with groff, i can produce papers (mostly
letters) of almost identical beauty with some fine-tuning, with
almost the identical number of "markup" (which is now also easily
typed with the american keyboard).  And the fine-tuning i like,
because i adore the calligraphic as an art, as an act of devotion
of the calligrapher, to some higher spirit or the being as such,
and spending some seconds in some text is my simple Boche
equivalence to those fine spirits.

--steffen

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-13 9:41 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> ...
> i have no idea of what happened on the TeX side in the last, say,
> about 15 years.  TeXLive has always been too large for me, i have

They have a small "basic" version with the essentials, a hundred 
megabytes or so.

http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html

> the KerTeX basics laying around since a few years, just in case
> i ever find time to come back to TeX.)  This can be a problem for
> quick use cases that do not allow proper reviews and fine-tuning,
> the latter sometimes down to the paragraph level, dependent on the
> material.  In TeX this can be tuned more easily with conservative
> values and looking out for "overfull boxes" (iirc), if such occur
> at all, then.
>
> My finding is that, with groff, i can produce papers (mostly
> letters) of almost identical beauty with some fine-tuning, with
> almost the identical number of "markup" (which is now also easily
> typed with the american keyboard).  And the fine-tuning i like,
> because i adore the calligraphic as an art, as an act of devotion
> of the calligrapher, to some higher spirit or the being as such,
> and spending some seconds in some text is my simple Boche
> equivalence to those fine spirits.

Indeed, as a typographer, I believe details matter, no matter what the 
audience. I think Knuth feels the same way. :)

--Toby


>
> --steffen
>

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
 |On 2017-04-13 9:41 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> ...
 |> i have no idea of what happened on the TeX side in the last, say,
 |> about 15 years.  TeXLive has always been too large for me, i have
 |
 |They have a small "basic" version with the essentials, a hundred 
 |megabytes or so.
 |
 |http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html

Oh, ok, now MacTeX basic, 110 MB.  That is really much, much
better, for me, that is.  I never used TeX since then, so i cannot
really tell -- my KerTeX repo ball is 11 MB..

  ...
 |> My finding is that, with groff, i can produce papers (mostly
 |> letters) of almost identical beauty with some fine-tuning, with
 |> almost the identical number of "markup" (which is now also easily
 |> typed with the american keyboard).  And the fine-tuning i like,
 |> because i adore the calligraphic as an art, as an act of devotion
 |> of the calligrapher, to some higher spirit or the being as such,
 |> and spending some seconds in some text is my simple Boche
 |> equivalence to those fine spirits.
 |
 |Indeed, as a typographer, I believe details matter, no matter what the 
 |audience. I think Knuth feels the same way. :)

It is really perfectly looking.  Maybe too perfect, in the
sense of, maybe even aseptic.  At least when having handmade,
artistic calligraphy as a personal optimum.  But this is of course
strange for business letters, and doesn't excuse irregular holes
in between words all over the page, as can be seen in
non-optimized roff.

--steffen

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Friday, 14 April 2017 at  1:22:59 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Indeed, as a typographer, I believe details matter, no matter what the
>> audience. I think Knuth feels the same way. :)
>
> It is really perfectly looking.  Maybe too perfect, in the
> sense of, maybe even aseptic.

My issue with TeX output using standard parameters is that it reaches
out, grabs you by the throat and says "I was formatted with Tex".
That would be mainly the Computer Modern fonts, but I haven't seen
that with any other text formatting software.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
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[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Nemo]

On 13 April 2017 at 20:40, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> My issue with TeX output using standard parameters is that it reaches
> out, grabs you by the throat and says "I was formatted with Tex".
> That would be mainly the Computer Modern fonts, but I haven't seen
> that with any other text formatting software.

You do have your choice of fonts. (I prefer palatino for text and euler for
math.  I haven't used cm fonts in decades.)

N.

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-13 9:59 PM, Nemo wrote:
> On 13 April 2017 at 20:40, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>> My issue with TeX output using standard parameters is that it reaches
>> out, grabs you by the throat and says "I was formatted with Tex".
>> That would be mainly the Computer Modern fonts, but I haven't seen
>> that with any other text formatting software.
>
> You do have your choice of fonts. (I prefer palatino for text and euler for
> math.  I haven't used cm fonts in decades.)

Yes, but not enough authors avail themselves of this -- and that's 
understandable -- not everyone is sensitive to such things.

--T

>
> N.
>

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-13 8:40 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Friday, 14 April 2017 at  1:22:59 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>> Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>> Indeed, as a typographer, I believe details matter, no matter what the
>>> audience. I think Knuth feels the same way. :)
>>
>> It is really perfectly looking.  Maybe too perfect, in the
>> sense of, maybe even aseptic.
>
> My issue with TeX output using standard parameters is that it reaches
> out, grabs you by the throat and says "I was formatted with Tex".
> That would be mainly the Computer Modern fonts, but I haven't seen
> that with any other text formatting software.

Yes, the font uniformity is unfortunate. Personally I think we're long 
overdue for a replacement default typeface family, or better yet, 
diversity (but the underlying engine I think is fine -- and so does 
Adobe -- it powers InDesign's paragraph composer :)

--T

>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
 |On Friday, 14 April 2017 at  1:22:59 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
 |>> Indeed, as a typographer, I believe details matter, no matter what the
 |>> audience. I think Knuth feels the same way. :)
 |>
 |> It is really perfectly looking.  Maybe too perfect, in the
 |> sense of, maybe even aseptic.
 |
 |My issue with TeX output using standard parameters is that it reaches
 |out, grabs you by the throat and says "I was formatted with Tex".
 |That would be mainly the Computer Modern fonts, but I haven't seen
 |that with any other text formatting software.

Maybe it really was a stupid comment of mine.  The thing is, not
too long ago i, somewhere, i watched something like
a documentation on old manuscripts, which we had hundreds of years
ago.  It was Art, it was devotion, these beautifully painted and
written manuscripts.  It is thus just the feeling of having lost
something: controlling a missile exactly or being able to create
a satellite that is capable to analyze a moon is a very amazing
and fantastic achievement, but it seems hollow and nil if not
based on the capability to be able to survive without supermarket
and have a notion of holism.  I.e., stand upon solid ground.
Then again i also favour multiplexer commands which hide the
complexity under the hood, rather than using a nice hand-written
Unix pipeline specification to create a letter myself.  Pfff.

--steffen

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Michael Kerpan]

Of course, these days, there's a version of troff that borrows TeX's layout
rules, while also adding vastly improved font handling, support for the
most useful/widely used groff extensions, and more. Why Heirloom troff
isn't more widely used is a puzzle for the ages.

Mike
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[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Michael Kerpan <madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
 |Of course, these days, there's a version of troff that borrows TeX's \
 |layout rules, while also adding vastly improved font handling, support \
 |for the most 
 |useful/widely used groff extensions, and more. Why Heirloom troff isn't \
 |more widely used is a puzzle for the ages.

For myself i can answer this, it is not compatible with my own
macro set, the headers and footers are completely messed up, so
i would need to rewrite all this.  The capabilities you mention
are great, sometimes a bit hard to use, maybe.  It is likely that
you can have very good results if you explicitly go for it; surely
the same can be said for GNU roff.

In fact i looked at it a few years ago, but the code appeared
(very) messy to me, and of course i already had been impaired by
"this is good enough for what i need (now)" code, though i for one
have also stated in the past that my damages (you can get a gray
beard!  So just in case this was the source for that) root in code
which has been written almost half a decade earlier.

But note that i never liked the multipass approach that is
necessary to generate (front page) TOC, indices etc., in sofar as
it must be driven from an outer authority.  Iirc there are hints
similar to "two or three pass, maybe more", until TOC and index
insertions are up-to-date and the page numbers have all come in
sync etc.  I "always" had the idea of having some multipass thing
built-in, so that the macros themselves can decide what is
necessary and what not, and are enabled themselves to pick up data
of former runs.  That is what i really would like to get to.
UTF-8 would be great, TTF fonts, too.  A somewhat improved
automatic overall formatting would be nice, or at least warnings
like TeXs "overfull box" (iirc), with page and line number.  But
i have zero idea of what will go and what not, and how long it
will take.  But it would be fantastic to be there one day.

--steffen

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-14 9:56 AM, Michael Kerpan wrote:
> Of course, these days, there's a version of troff that borrows TeX's
> layout rules, while also adding vastly improved font handling, support
> for the most useful/widely used groff extensions, and more. Why Heirloom
> troff isn't more widely used is a puzzle for the ages.

No matter how far you tart up the former, Troff and TeX just aren't 
playing the same ballgame.

--T

>
> Mike

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Michael Kerpan]

Comparing documents produced by Heirloom troff and modern versions of
LaTeX, I just can't see a huge difference. The main thing TeX has going for
it is LyX, which makes composing documents a whole lot more comfortable for
folks raised on WYSIWYG. If a tool like that was available for troff...

Mike

On Apr 14, 2017 6:24 PM, "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:

On 2017-04-14 9:56 AM, Michael Kerpan wrote:

> Of course, these days, there's a version of troff that borrows TeX's
> layout rules, while also adding vastly improved font handling, support
> for the most useful/widely used groff extensions, and more. Why Heirloom
> troff isn't more widely used is a puzzle for the ages.
>

No matter how far you tart up the former, Troff and TeX just aren't playing
the same ballgame.

--T


> Mike
>
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[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-04-15 10:23 AM, Michael Kerpan wrote:
> Comparing documents produced by Heirloom troff and modern versions of
> LaTeX, I just can't see a huge difference. The main thing TeX has going
> for it is LyX, which makes composing documents a whole lot more
> comfortable for folks raised on WYSIWYG. If a tool like that was
> available for troff...

I'm not only talking about the _output_. But my intention isn't to 
denigrate troff but to show that they are completely different animals. 
A glance through the TeXbook would confirm.

TeX is a complete domain-specific language, page model, and runtime 
environment (without even discussing its layered frameworks like LaTeX). 
I admit it took me a few weeks or months of study back in the late 1980s 
to understand this distinction; previously I had been using a 
troff-level markup (perhaps even troff-inspired) on Mac called 
"JustText", which generated PostScript of course.

One _can_ typeset books in both troff and TeX, but that doesn't make 
them at all equivalent. The process and possibilities are different. For 
example, that simple task of producing two different output formats from 
the same manuscript, that I mentioned upthread, is made possible by TeX 
macros. But the sophistication of its page model is also required for 
any nontrivial layout, table, diagram, math, or just typographic 
refinement.

Some projects _have_ tried to replace TeX. 
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/120271/alternatives-to-latex

--T

>
> Mike
>
> On Apr 14, 2017 6:24 PM, "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au
> <mailto:toby at telegraphics.com.au>> wrote:
>
>     On 2017-04-14 9:56 AM, Michael Kerpan wrote:
>
>         Of course, these days, there's a version of troff that borrows TeX's
>         layout rules, while also adding vastly improved font handling,
>         support
>         for the most useful/widely used groff extensions, and more. Why
>         Heirloom
>         troff isn't more widely used is a puzzle for the ages.
>
>
>     No matter how far you tart up the former, Troff and TeX just aren't
>     playing the same ballgame.
>
>     --T
>
>
>         Mike
>
>
>

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - SunOS 4 documentation

[Mutiny]

I alkways wonder why there wasn't any WYSIWYG n/troff software. At least I don't know about it.From: Michael Kerpan <madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com>Sent: Sat, 15 Apr 2017 19:54:22To: Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au>Cc: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.orgSubject: Re: [TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - SunOS 4 documentation Comparing documents produced by Heirloom troff and modern versions of LaTeX, I just can't see a huge difference. The main thing TeX has going for it is LyX, which makes composing documents a whole lot more comfortable for folks raised on WYSIWYG. If a tool like that was available for troff...
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[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - SunOS 4 documentation

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sun, 15 Apr 2017, Mutiny  wrote:

> I alkways wonder why there wasn't any WYSIWYG n/troff software. At least 
> I don't know about it.

Err, because terminals were hard-copy at the time?

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - SunOS 4 documentation

[ron minnich]

This may cleara it up.

https://softsenseblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/asr33-753504.jpg

On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 2:49 PM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 15 Apr 2017, Mutiny  wrote:
>
> > I alkways wonder why there wasn't any WYSIWYG n/troff software. At least
> > I don't know about it.
>
> Err, because terminals were hard-copy at the time?
>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."
>
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[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - SunOS 4 documentation

[Dave Horsfall]

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On Sat, 15 Apr 2017, ron minnich wrote:

> This may cleara it up.
> https://softsenseblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/asr33-753504.jpg

Well, I suppose it's partly transparent...

> On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 2:49 PM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>       On Sun, 15 Apr 2017, Mutiny  wrote:
> 
>       > I alkways wonder why there wasn't any WYSIWYG n/troff software. 
>       > At least I don't know about it.
> 
>       Err, because terminals were hard-copy at the time?

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Clem Cole]

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On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 6:24 PM, Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au>
wrote:
>
>
> No matter how far you tart up the former, Troff and TeX just aren't
> playing the same ballgame.


​Toby - that's a tad inflammatory - at least to my American sensibilities.
Saying one or the other has been "dressed up" (using a derogatory term or
not) is to me the same as the vi/emacs wars or rugby/American Football
argument.   Some people like the taste of one, others do not, and thank
goodness we have choices.   I've used the afore mentioned systems (and
played the games too at a fairly high level in my day); and frankly it is a
matter if taste.  They all have their place.

If you grew up with an affinity for one, you are more likely to find it
more comfortable for your needs.  I find a TeX just as ugly and unreadable
as  the runoff family with troff is a member.   It's just a different view
of beauty.  Frankly, Brian Reid's Scribe on the "Twinex" and VMS was the
"best" document product system I ever really used (for those that do not
know, LaTex was an attempt to bring Scribe-like functions into TeX).    But
as Brian Kernighan points out in his "Page Makeup" paper, even Scribe had
some flaws (it's too bad Scribe seems to have been lost to IP and source
issues - I've often wonder how it would have played out in the modern
world).

Anyway - it fine to say you don't like troff - please feel free to suggest
that you don't think that it can be made to your style/preferences.   But
please don't sling to many insults as the truth is, that troff is still
useful to many people and a lot people do still like it.

In my own case, I'll use TeX if a colleague wants too, but I'm a fair bit
faster with troff than almost any other doc prep system for any document of
almost any size; but particularly when the documents get large such as
book.   But that's me; although I note it is also a lot of other people.
As Brian points out, many of the Pearson and Wiley texts use troff; and of
course you have to note that my old deskmate, Tim O'Reilly founded his
empire on it 😂 (I still have a copy of the his original style manual they
wrote for the Masscomp engineers and doc writers in the mid 80s).
Clem
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[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

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On 2017-04-15 11:27 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 6:24 PM, Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au
> <mailto:toby at telegraphics.com.au>> wrote:
>
>
>     No matter how far you tart up the former, Troff and TeX just aren't
>     playing the same ballgame.
>
>
> ​Toby - that's a tad inflammatory - at least to my American
> sensibilities.

Perhaps moreso than I intended. In any case, my 2nd post clarifies what 
I meant about the two tools being very, very different even if they 
"both work" for some tasks.

--T

> Clem

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Toby Thain]

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On 2017-04-15 11:27 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> ...
> Anyway - it fine to say you don't like troff - please feel free to
> suggest that you don't think that it can be made to your
> style/preferences.   But please don't sling to many insults as the truth
> is, that troff is still useful to many people and a lot people do still
> like it.

I'm not saying I "don't like troff". I don't care what anyone uses.

>
> In my own case, I'll use TeX if a colleague wants too, but I'm a fair
> bit faster with troff than almost any other doc prep system for any
> document of almost any size; but particularly when the documents get
> large such as book.   But that's me; although I note it is also a lot of
> other people.   As Brian points out, many of the Pearson and Wiley texts
> use troff; and of course you have to note that my old deskmate, Tim

...and of course I know books have been set with troff. That's 
irrelevant to the point I was making: Tools of different generations, 
with different provenance, ambitions, designs, and capabilities. I hope 
no confusion remains.

--T

> O'Reilly founded his empire on it 😂 (I still have a copy of the his
> original style manual they wrote for the Masscomp engineers and doc
> writers in the mid 80s).
> Clem

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Saturday, 15 April 2017 at 11:27:49 -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> If you grew up with an affinity for one, you are more likely to find
> it more comfortable for your needs.  I find a TeX just as ugly and
> unreadable as the runoff family with troff is a member.

FWIW, I grew up with TeX, but when I wrote "Porting UNIX Software" for
O'Reilly, they wanted the markup in groff with their adaptation of the
mm macro set.  I was game, and it worked well.  And then I discovered
I didn't want to go back to TeX.  I stuck with groff, and 20 years
later I'm still using it.

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Wolfgang Helbig]

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> Am 13.04.2017 um 17:40 schrieb Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au>:
> 
> On 2017-04-13 9:41 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>> ...
>> i have no idea of what happened on the TeX side in the last, say,
>> about 15 years.  TeXLive has always been too large for me, i have
> 
> They have a small "basic" version with the essentials, a hundred megabytes or so.
> 
> http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html

this one is even smaller, only about 700 kB:
	https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/tex-gpc

You’ll need the GNU Pascal Compiler to install it. Regrettable, GPC does
not run on current Versions of Mac OS X.

Greetings

Wolfgang Helbig
Stauferstr. 22

71334 Waiblingen

[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Clem Cole]

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Have you tried the Free Pascal Compiler?    Its pretty much become the
standard for Pascal these days and runs on just about everything (including
modern Macs).  It also supports most of the modern Pascal dialect such as
Delphi et al.

Clem

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 9:07 AM, Wolfgang Helbig <helbig at mailbox.org> wrote:

>
> > Am 13.04.2017 um 17:40 schrieb Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au>:
> >
> > On 2017-04-13 9:41 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> >> ...
> >> i have no idea of what happened on the TeX side in the last, say,
> >> about 15 years.  TeXLive has always been too large for me, i have
> >
> > They have a small "basic" version with the essentials, a hundred
> megabytes or so.
> >
> > http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html
>
> this one is even smaller, only about 700 kB:
>         https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/tex-gpc
>
> You’ll need the GNU Pascal Compiler to install it. Regrettable, GPC does
> not run on current Versions of Mac OS X.
>
> Greetings
>
> Wolfgang Helbig
> Stauferstr. 22
>
> 71334 Waiblingen
>
>
>
>
>
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[TUHS] TeX/troff/typesetting markups - Re: SunOS 4 documentation

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 14 Apr 2017, at 14:07, Wolfgang Helbig <helbig at mailbox.org> wrote:
> 
> this one is even smaller, only about 700 kB:
> 	https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/tex-gpc

That's just TeX, Metafont, and perhaps plain & the MF sources for CMR.

Installing that might indeed be interesting in the context of this list, because it would give a feeling for what installing TeX was like in the early 1980s: you went through some more-or-less painful process to get the thing to compile at all, typically involving building a Pascal-C converter of some kind, converting tangle into C, fiddling with the result so it would compile, then using the result to convert TeX (with the various patches which I forget how they work now, except not by 'patch' which probably did not exist anyway) into C, fiddling with *that* to get it to compile, then doing the same for MF, building the plain format & font metrics.  At which point you could probably make DVI files using macros in plain, but not print them or see what they looked like at all.  After dealing with that somehow you realised just how horrible plain looked and started on a huge slow journey of acquiring sets of macros, usually culminating in the inevitability of having to write a less-horrible style for LaTeX (which would be 2.09 without the NFSS and thus deeply painful to use).  Oh, and you had to work out some directory structure for it all to live in, because there wasn't any standard for that, of course.

So, such a thing is interesting in the way that installing 7th edition is interesting, but probably not if you want to actually set text.  If you want to set text just install TeX Live.  Yes, it's big (by 1980s standards: you can perhaps still buy a smartphone without enough storage for it), but it's big because it includes everything you need.

--tim

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Nemo]

On 12 April 2017 at 22:20, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
[...]
>> While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and exacting
>> typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am afraid.
>
> I'd like to learn more about that.  I'd done a ton of stuff in troff,
> had to do a paper recently in LaTex and I did not find it at all better.
> It was a technical paper, usual stuff, text and tables and figures
> and references.  I'm not great at LaTex so maybe it's just my bias
> but I really like troff.  In fairness, I like groff, I got James to hack
> some stuff into pic for me.
>
> But it started with troff.  I still remember walking out of the computer
> science bookstore with a copy of the troff manual.  That was sort of my
> introduction to Unix and it fits.

I started off with troff (on Suns) and then the dep't installed (La)TeX.  I
switched to LaTeX because I was writing math and it looks better in the
latter (as Knuth intended).  I dabbled with TeX but never stuck to it -- too
much like assembler.  Interestingly, the secretarial staff learnt TeX and
the grad students all used LaTeX.

At work, we once used noweb (and xfig and pstex) to document our code.
This was well before doxygen and I think it worked fairly well (despite the
extra steps).

N.

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Steve Simon]

i haven't tried it in anger but bwk's pm(1) troff post-proscessor, which does paragraph at at a time layout, is available as a plan9 package. written in c++ so early that cfront will compile it.

-Steve


> On 13 Apr 2017, at 15:14, Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 12 April 2017 at 22:20, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> [..
>>> While troff can get stuff done in its area, for heavy duty work and exacting
>>> typography, TeX's markup blows troff out of the water, I am afraid.
>> 
>> I'd like to learn more about that.  I'd done a ton of stuff in troff,
>> had to do a paper recently in LaTex and I did not find it at all better.
>> It was a technical paper, usual stuff, text and tables and figures
>> and references.  I'm not great at LaTex so maybe it's just my bias
>> but I really like troff.  In fairness, I like groff, I got James to hack
>> some stuff into pic for me.
>> 
>> But it started with troff.  I still remember walking out of the computer
>> science bookstore with a copy of the troff manual.  That was sort of my
>> introduction to Unix and it fits.
> 
> I started off with troff (on Suns) and then the dep't installed (La)TeX.  I
> switched to LaTeX because I was writing math and it looks better in the
> latter (as Knuth intended).  I dabbled with TeX but never stuck to it -- too
> much like assembler.  Interestingly, the secretarial staff learnt TeX and
> the grad students all used LaTeX.
> 
> At work, we once used noweb (and xfig and pstex) to document our code.
> This was well before doxygen and I think it worked fairly well (despite the
> extra steps).
> 
> N.

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Steve Simon <steve at quintile.net> wrote:
 |i haven't tried it in anger but bwk's pm(1) troff post-proscessor, \
 |which does paragraph at at a time layout, is available as a plan9 package. \
 |written in c++ so early that cfront will compile it.

I cannot find this?  I only found occurrences of the macro
package, which seems to adjust some -ms macro for better vertical
stretching and widow avoidance?  Also nice, but not a generic
approach.

--steffen

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Steve Simon]

Hi all.

I apologise for misleading tuhs, pm does not do paragraph at a time formatting; memory is not what it used to be. 

It does have some interesting ideas nonetheless - and I have been inspired to try it again.

The code and macros should be here:
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/steve/pm.tbz

[I haven't been able to check as i am on holiday]

The paper describing it is here:
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/compsystems/1989/spr_kernighan.pdf

-Steve

> On 14 Apr 2017, at 00:14, Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen at sdaoden.eu> wrote:
> 
> Steve Simon <steve at quintile.net> wrote:
> |i haven't tried it in anger but bwk's pm(1) troff post-proscessor, \
> |which does paragraph at at a time layout, is available as a plan9 package. \
> |written in c++ so early that cfront will compile it.
> 
> I cannot find this?  I only found occurrences of the macro
> package, which seems to adjust some -ms macro for better vertical
> stretching and widow avoidance?  Also nice, but not a generic
> approach.
> 
> --steffen
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[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Steve Simon <steve at quintile.net> wrote:
 |I apologise for misleading tuhs, pm does not do paragraph at a time \
 |formatting; memory is not what it used to be. 
 |
 |It does have some interesting ideas nonetheless - and I have been inspired \
 |to try it again.
 |
 |The code and macros should be here:
 |
 |[1]http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/steve/pm.tbz[/1]

Got it.

 |[I haven't been able to check as i am on holiday]
 |
 |The paper describing it is here:
 |
 |[2]https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/compsystems/1989/spr_kernighan\
 |.pdf[/2]

Have and read this, too.  This seems to be very interesting, again
(it is Kernighan).  It will take a long time until i will be able
to truly understand it with all of the context it comes from and
lives in, though.
Thanks for the pointer!

--steffen

[TUHS] SunOS 4 documentation

[John Labovitz]

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On 2017-04-12 7:31 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:

> I love me
> some troff, even to this day.  I really really really wish that someone
> had done framemaker, word, whatever, that was the GUI interface that had
> troff under the covers.  Why?  Because you can version control the source


A bit off topic, but…

I’ve been researching modern macOS writing apps over the last few days. I was very surprised to find that almost all of them use Markdown as their primary format — not just for import/export, but as a storage format as well as a user interface. (Examples: Ulysses, Scrivener, ByWord.) It seems that Markdown and text files has become the gold standard in this particular class of app, even for folks who’d never use the command line. Granted, not all those apps expose the documents as normal, version-controllable files, but still, it’s pretty wild to see text formats be accepted again, at least in a narrow class of documentation-related tools.

—John