[TUHS] It is time to modernise "groff"

[TUHS] It is time to modernise "groff"

[Doug McIlroy]

> > p) Remove the '-a' option (the ASCII approximation output).
> 
> I didn't even know this existed.  Looking at what it spits out, I find
> myself wondering what good it is.  Is this for Unix troff compatibility?
> For people who didn't even have glass TTYs and needed to imagine what
> the typeset output would look like?

Here's a classic use:

Since groff is not WYSIWYG, the experimental cycle is long:
edit - save - groff - view. In many cases that cycle can be
short-circuited by typing straight into groff -a.

doug

[TUHS] It is time to modernise "groff"

[Steve Simon]

On 5 Sep 2017, at 12:37, Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:

>>> p) Remove the '-a' option (the ASCII approximation output).
>> 
>> I didn't even know this existed.  Looking at what it spits out, I find
>> myself wondering what good it is.  Is this for Unix troff compatibility?
>> For people who didn't even have glass TTYs and needed to imagine what
>> the typeset output would look like?
> 
> Here's a classic use:
> 
> Since groff is not WYSIWYG, the experimental cycle is long:
> edit - save - groff - view. In many cases that cycle can be
> short-circuited by typing straight into groff -a.
> 
> doug

i take a different approach.

i try to minimise the number of edit, troff, view cycles by typing as much of the text in as i can before viewing, relying on troff, tbl, and friends to make it look good.

this stops me from being distracted by layout and keeps me on the important stuff - the content.

the fact that troff is slower to display proofs than a WYSIWYG editor is, IMHO, a positive advantage.

-Steve

[TUHS] It is time to modernise "groff"

[Larry McVoy]

So for those who want WYSIWYG this little script helps.  I call it "g"
and you run it like so

	g groff -ms -t my_tables.ms

in a terminal (or use &) and it will pop up gv on the processed file[s].
It sits in a loop and stats all the files and if any have changed it
reruns the roff and tells gv.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 
-------------- next part --------------
#!/usr/bin/perl

# Run the command into PS
# Run gv with the -watch option
# go into a loop watching the file and rerun command whenever the file
# has changed.

use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";

$usage = "usage: $0 comand -args -args file [file ...]\n";

foreach $file (@ARGV) {
	next unless -f $file;
	push(@files, $file);
}
die $usage unless $#files > -1;
$cmd = "@ARGV > PS.$ENV{USER}";
$gv = "gv -spartan -antialias PS.$ENV{USER}";
$gv = "gv --spartan --antialias --media=letter PS.$ENV{USER}";

system "$cmd";
$pid = fork;
if ($pid == 0) {
	exec $gv;
	die $gv;
}
# Read all the files looking for .so's so we catch the implied list.
# I dunno if groff catches nested .so's but we don't.
foreach $file (@files) {
	$stat{$file} = (stat($file))[9];
	open(F, $file);
	while (<F>) {
		next unless /^\.so\s+(.*)\s*$/;
		$stat{$1} = (stat($1))[9];
	}
	close(F);
}
while (1) {
	select(undef, undef, undef, .2);
	$kid = waitpid($pid,&WNOHANG);
	exit 0 if (kill(0, $pid) != 1);
	$doit = 0;
	foreach $f (keys %stat) {
		if ($stat{$f} != (stat($f))[9]) {
			$stat{$f} = (stat($f))[9];
			$doit = 1;
		}
	}
	if ($doit) {
		system $cmd;
		kill(1, $pid);
	}
}

[TUHS] It is time to modernise "groff"

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Sep 05, 2017 at 07:37:16AM -0400, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> > > p) Remove the '-a' option (the ASCII approximation output).
> > 
> > I didn't even know this existed.  Looking at what it spits out, I find
> > myself wondering what good it is.  Is this for Unix troff compatibility?
> > For people who didn't even have glass TTYs and needed to imagine what
> > the typeset output would look like?
> 
> Here's a classic use:
> 
> Since groff is not WYSIWYG, the experimental cycle is long:
> edit - save - groff - view. In many cases that cycle can be
> short-circuited by typing straight into groff -a.

If that is the one that makes pic try to do stuff in ascii I've used
that a lot in the days of yore.

I've found, maybe it's no longer true, but back when I was at Sun 25
years ago, that I got farther with execs if I formatted my stuff two
ways: as postscript (or PDF today) and as ascii.  I would send the
ascii version with a header that said "Read this, this is what I 
was babbling about, there is a printable version attached".

It was crazy but my influence with the execs went way up and I came
to the conclusion they didn't read attachments.

That's probably all changed, everyone has a mailer that formats
html and people send their stuff that way.

But there's another use for -a.