[TUHS] 1980s troff help?

[TUHS] 1980s troff help?

[Tom Lyon via TUHS]

Anyone have a working pic|tbl|eqn|troff setup?  In preparation for next
week's NFS celebration, it'd be great to get some of the original specs
turned into PDFs.

The TUHS archive has the NFS kernel source release for non-Sun
developers/licensees at https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Sun/

Under usr/src/sun/doc are all the protocol specifications - nfs, rpc, xdr,
and yp.   But they're all troff source.  The README says:

To troff the files in this directory, use:

pic | tbl | eqn | troff -ms sunhead.ms -

This assumes that troff is a front end that sets up ditroff. sunhead.ms
requires more font positions than the standard troff allows. Font position 7
is mapped to a constant width font and font position 6 is mapped to a bold
constant width font. If you don't have these, you'll have to play with the
mappings.

The file sunhead.ms is a header file containing some definitions.


It'd be great if these specs could be turned into pdfs.
I was never any good with troff.

There's a site being built with tons of NFS docs; these would be a great
addition.

Thanks for any help!

[TUHS] Re: 1980s troff help?

[Arnold Robbins via TUHS]

I was able to get the plan9port troff going without too much
trouble.  It let me format a book published in 1981 without
too much trouble.  I can send you the notes I made.

I'm not too soure about fonts 6 and 7 though.

Let me know (off list) if you want more info.

Arnold

Tom Lyon via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> Anyone have a working pic|tbl|eqn|troff setup?  In preparation for next
> week's NFS celebration, it'd be great to get some of the original specs
> turned into PDFs.
>
> The TUHS archive has the NFS kernel source release for non-Sun
> developers/licensees at https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Sun/
>
> Under usr/src/sun/doc are all the protocol specifications - nfs, rpc, xdr,
> and yp.   But they're all troff source.  The README says:
>
> To troff the files in this directory, use:
>
> pic | tbl | eqn | troff -ms sunhead.ms -
>
> This assumes that troff is a front end that sets up ditroff. sunhead.ms
> requires more font positions than the standard troff allows. Font position 7
> is mapped to a constant width font and font position 6 is mapped to a bold
> constant width font. If you don't have these, you'll have to play with the
> mappings.
>
> The file sunhead.ms is a header file containing some definitions.
>
>
> It'd be great if these specs could be turned into pdfs.
> I was never any good with troff.
>
> There's a site being built with tons of NFS docs; these would be a great
> addition.
>
> Thanks for any help!

[TUHS] Re: 1980s troff help?

[Arnold Robbins via TUHS]

I'll also note that in the past I've had a lot of success with
groff -C (compatibility mode)  using original Unix macro files
from the TUHS archives.  That may provide another (easier) option.

Arnold Robbins via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> I was able to get the plan9port troff going without too much
> trouble.  It let me format a book published in 1981 without
> too much trouble.  I can send you the notes I made.
>
> I'm not too soure about fonts 6 and 7 though.
>
> Let me know (off list) if you want more info.
>
> Arnold
>
> Tom Lyon via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> > Anyone have a working pic|tbl|eqn|troff setup?  In preparation for next
> > week's NFS celebration, it'd be great to get some of the original specs
> > turned into PDFs.
> >
> > The TUHS archive has the NFS kernel source release for non-Sun
> > developers/licensees at https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Sun/
> >
> > Under usr/src/sun/doc are all the protocol specifications - nfs, rpc, xdr,
> > and yp.   But they're all troff source.  The README says:
> >
> > To troff the files in this directory, use:
> >
> > pic | tbl | eqn | troff -ms sunhead.ms -
> >
> > This assumes that troff is a front end that sets up ditroff. sunhead.ms
> > requires more font positions than the standard troff allows. Font position 7
> > is mapped to a constant width font and font position 6 is mapped to a bold
> > constant width font. If you don't have these, you'll have to play with the
> > mappings.
> >
> > The file sunhead.ms is a header file containing some definitions.
> >
> >
> > It'd be great if these specs could be turned into pdfs.
> > I was never any good with troff.
> >
> > There's a site being built with tons of NFS docs; these would be a great
> > addition.
> >
> > Thanks for any help!

[TUHS] Re: 1980s troff help?

[Jonathan Gray via TUHS]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 07:08:23PM -0700, Tom Lyon via TUHS wrote:
> Anyone have a working pic|tbl|eqn|troff setup?  In preparation for next
> week's NFS celebration, it'd be great to get some of the original specs
> turned into PDFs.
> 
> The TUHS archive has the NFS kernel source release for non-Sun
> developers/licensees at https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Sun/
> 
> Under usr/src/sun/doc are all the protocol specifications - nfs, rpc, xdr,
> and yp.   But they're all troff source.  The README says:
> 
> To troff the files in this directory, use:
> 
> pic | tbl | eqn | troff -ms sunhead.ms -
> 
> This assumes that troff is a front end that sets up ditroff. sunhead.ms
> requires more font positions than the standard troff allows. Font position 7
> is mapped to a constant width font and font position 6 is mapped to a bold
> constant width font. If you don't have these, you'll have to play with the
> mappings.
> 
> The file sunhead.ms is a header file containing some definitions.
> 
> 
> It'd be great if these specs could be turned into pdfs.
> I was never any good with troff.
> 
> There's a site being built with tons of NFS docs; these would be a great
> addition.
> 
> Thanks for any help!

Output can be compared to scans.

--

Networking on the Sun Workstation

Part Number: 800-1177-01
Revision: A of 15 April 1985
For: Sun System Release 2.0

https://archive.org/details/Sun_800-1177-01_SunOS_2.0_Networking_on_the_Sun_Workstation
https://archive.org/details/sun-networking

--

Networking on the Sun Workstation

800-1325-03
Revision: B of 17 February 1986

bitsavers pdf/sun/sunos/3.0/
800-1324-03B_Networking_on_the_Sun_Workstation_198602.pdf

[TUHS] Re: 1980s troff help?

[Russ Cox via TUHS]

I downloaded the Sun archive, changed the troff to refer to
fonts C and CB instead of L and LB, and then ran it through
the Heirloom Doctools <https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools>
version of troff with no problems.
I published the results in a Git repo at https://github.com/rsc/nfs.

Specifically see:
https://github.com/rsc/nfs/blob/main/release.pdf
https://github.com/rsc/nfs/tree/main/usr/src/sun/doc

The conversion is fairly close to the scans that Jonathan Gray
posted but not exact. The released text is not always the same
as the scanned text, and the code for generating the tables of
contents was not released, so those are missing.
But overall it is surprisingly close.

Best,
Russ

[TUHS] Re: 1980s troff help?

[Tom Lyon via TUHS]

Awesome! Many thanks!

On Tue, Sep 16, 2025 at 5:34 AM Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:

> I downloaded the Sun archive, changed the troff to refer to
> fonts C and CB instead of L and LB, and then ran it through
> the Heirloom Doctools <https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools>
> version of troff with no problems.
> I published the results in a Git repo at https://github.com/rsc/nfs.
>
> Specifically see:
> https://github.com/rsc/nfs/blob/main/release.pdf
> https://github.com/rsc/nfs/tree/main/usr/src/sun/doc
>
> The conversion is fairly close to the scans that Jonathan Gray
> posted but not exact. The released text is not always the same
> as the scanned text, and the code for generating the tables of
> contents was not released, so those are missing.
> But overall it is surprisingly close.
>
> Best,
> Russ
>
>

[TUHS] Re: 1980s troff help?

[Stuff Received via TUHS]

On 2025-09-16 08:34, Russ Cox via TUHS wrote:
> I downloaded the Sun archive, changed the troff to refer to
> fonts C and CB instead of L and LB, and then ran it through
> the Heirloom Doctools <https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools>
> version of troff with no problems.

I was going to put them through the troff system on my Solaris 11.3 box 
but it has no "pic" -- most surprisingly.

S.


> I published the results in a Git repo at https://github.com/rsc/nfs.
> 
> Specifically see:
> https://github.com/rsc/nfs/blob/main/release.pdf
> https://github.com/rsc/nfs/tree/main/usr/src/sun/doc
> 
> The conversion is fairly close to the scans that Jonathan Gray
> posted but not exact. The released text is not always the same
> as the scanned text, and the code for generating the tables of
> contents was not released, so those are missing.
> But overall it is surprisingly close.
> 
> Best,
> Russ