[TUHS] Re: Old troff files (1988-2007)

[Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>]

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Branden. Thank you.     FWIW I have generally found heirloom to be good
enough for rendering most old troff on modern systems such that I can
reasonably read the text.  But I suspect your detail is useful to know in
some cases.  As they say YMMR.  That said I often use the groff tools kits
since it’s what comes with things like brew on my Mac but it burps on
certain macros, particularly when I want to render old man pages or doc
files from old Unix versions  with things like .UX macro (which is a PITA).

Thanks again,
Clem

Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual


On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 8:14 PM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Doug,
>
> At 2024-10-04T21:42:50+0000, Jacobson, Doug W [E CPE] via TUHS wrote:
> > Folks:
> >
> > Long story short, I have a unpublished manuscript that a faculty
> > member in my department wrote late 1980's early 2000's.  He did the
> > entire thing in troff, eqn, and pic.  The faculty member is still
> > alive.  A publisher is interested in the manuscript.  I have all of
> > the source files on an old unix machine that still has troff, eqn and
> > pic.  It also has groff.  This issue is that the pic commands are
> > bracketed by .G1 and .G2 not .PS & .PE.
>
> As others noted, those are the characteristic preprocessor tokens used
> by grap(1).
>
> groff(1) says:
>      A free implementation of the grap preprocessor, written by Ted
>      Faber ⟨faber@lunabase.org⟩, can be found at the grap website
>      ⟨http://www.lunabase.org/~faber/Vault/software/grap/⟩.  groff
>      supports only this grap.
>
> Distributors often have a package of Faber's grap.  I'm not aware of any
> other in circulation.  (Happy to be corrected here.)
>
> Please contact the groff list, groff at gnu dot org, if you have any
> problems using it to format these documents and/or to note formatting
> discrepancies between Unix troff and groff.  There will likely be some.
>
> I've noted differences between DWB troff and Heirloom troff, so using
> the latter does not guarantee identical rendering, and moreover
> DWB/System V troff has some bugs/limitations that Heirloom and/or GNU
> troffs have fixed, and some of these can affect formatting.
>
> Here's a list from groff's tbl(1) man page, for example.
>
>    GNU tbl enhancements
>      In addition to extensions noted above, GNU tbl removes constraints
>      endured by users of AT&T tbl.
>
>      •  Region options can be specified in any lettercase.
>
>      •  There is no limit on the number of columns in a table,
>         regardless of their classification, nor any limit on the number
>         of text blocks.
>
>      •  All table rows are considered when deciding column widths, not
>         just those occurring in the first 200 input lines of a region.
>         Similarly, table continuation (.T&) tokens are recognized
>         outside a region’s first 200 input lines.
>
>      •  Numeric and alphabetic entries may appear in the same column.
>
>      •  Numeric and alphabetic entries may span horizontally.
>
> One can imagine how a 200+-row table could format differently between
> DWB/System V and GNU tbl, without either being "wrong".
>
> Regards,
> Branden
>

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