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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.106 contrary, it still isn't funny to followup a flame of one line followups with a one line followup. Trust me, you *aren't* the first to think of this. 2. Anything from or following up to the Person Who Must Not Be Named, ``Doctor'' R*ger R*bb*t. Thankfully, he hasn't found any place where he's welcome except alt.tv.tiny-toon, which deserves him. 1. Finches. IV. Traps for the unwary. Anyone posting to [ab]Usenet should always check the headers of anything they are following up to. You might be amazed what you find there. Newbie baiters (see section II, THUGS) have a great time adding a Followup-to: line directing copies of your deathless prose to the test groups (which will echo your posting multiple times to you via mail), or perhaps worse, to groups full of humorless nutcases like misc.jobs.offered. Pay attention! Another trick is the bogus group. The major perpetrator of these, Roger Carasso, is pretty much off the net (sadly it will most likely not be permanent), but you'll surely still see groups like alt.wanted.moslem.gay created for the sole purpose of outraging some group or another. Expect your indignant posting to these groups to be digestified and widely reposted for the amusement of clueless morons. The best defense is to not take yourself or the net seriously. Even legitimate groups populated by overly enthusiastic people might be so abused. Lastly, learn your net names, not user names. It is pitifully easy to modify just about everything in a news header. If you have any doubts, check the Path: line against the From: user line. The path line is very hard to successfully forge and most don't bother because many newsreaders don't display it unless you save the whole article to a file and list it out. V. Staple threads. If you aren't creative enough to think up an original topic, you _might_ try one of these. Better yet, don't: - Short Shameful Confession (and variants). A supposed t.b rite of passage. Imagine it as one-handed Truth or Dare. The more you embarrass yourself in the fewer words, the better. - One Line bio. These have for the most part died out, mostly because everyone who you might care about (and many you don't) have done one already. - Rictus Hep stories. Sort of like the Sufi character Nasrudin walking through Zen koans. That's giving the whole thing way too much credit though. *Way* too much. - 100 word stories. Out of fashion for the most part. - Transformations. The sole property of Mark. Gooley. If you do one, shamelessly imitate his style. Find out what it is first. - Limericks and haiku. The only thing worse than posting one of these is getting the meter wrong. - Pro and Con. This is a new one. It has potential though. Your best bet is to think of something new that nobody's ever seen before. If you can do that, you'll be welcome in talk.bizarre. VI. Catchphrases never to be used. This is a trick section. No catchphrase, from any source, is ever to be used. Unless you really want to and don't mind being flamed back to the stone age. Some catchphrases never to be used: - And that's why I had to kill them all. - Been there, done that - By the Holy Claws of Klortho the Magnificent, this IS a fine morning! - Cut it out, nj - Cut it out, Roger - Die, rat bastard - Go jump in a goddam volcano, you fu**ing cave newt - [Just about anything] IN BED! - Smegma rich - There is no Cabal - We seem to have a new catchphrase on our hands - Welcome to talk.bizarre. Now, FU** OFF (TM) - You are an asshole. Shut the fu** up - You spelled 'pieces' wrong VII. Folklore. [I don't have enough experience in t.b to do this section properly. Submissions of BOB stories, particularly odious posters, threads from hell, stupid breast tricks, etc. will be gratefully accepted at pv@gagme.chi.il.us] One day, Richard Sexton was walking in the forest when he came upon a novice who was spitting up blood. ``O, novice,'' said Richard Sexton, ``what is the matter? Wherefore do you spit up your precious bodily fluids?'' ``It is because I am trying to turn myself inside out,'' replied the leaking fellow. ``I believe that when my insides are exposed to the air and my outsides are on my insides, my wisdom will encompass the universe.'' Sexton tore the novice's arm off and hit him over the head with it. At that moment, the novice dropped dead. (This is a true story. -StL) By the Holy Claws of Klortho the Magnificent, this IS a fine morning! talk.bizarre Steering Committee tbsc@volcano.tbsc.org Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu comp.text:10750 news.answers:4593 Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!uunet!uunet.ca!ecicrl!clewis From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) Newsgroups: comp.text,news.answers,comp.answers Subject: comp.text Frequently Asked Questions Summary: Discussions on text processing in general, and troff in particular Keywords: typesetting troff groff ditroff wysiwyg sgml word desktop dwb Message-ID: <textfaq_724396940@ecicrl> Date: 15 Dec 92 05:22:34 GMT Expires: 12 Jan 93 05:22:20 GMT Reply-To: textfaq@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Text FAQ commentary reception) Followup-To: comp.text Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada Lines: 595 Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu Supersedes: <textfaq_723187334@ecicrl> Archive-name: text-faq Last-Modified: Wed Dec 9 02:53:12 EST 1992 Frequently Asked Questions for comp.text Chris Lewis Nils-Peter Nelson (This list was originally compiled by Jaap Akkerhuis, Dick Dunn, Nick Haines, Steve Harley, Harro Kremer, Chris Lewis, John Macdonald, Bob Morris, Nils-Peter Nelson, Chip Rosenthal.) If you have comments or additions, please contact Chris Lewis, textfaq@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (note Reply-to). | Changes are marked with a "|" in left column. Many newsreaders | (ie: rn, trn) allow you to search for them with "g^|". Changes this issue: Psroff is now PL14. A few minor diddles. Questions discussed: General interest: GN1. What is the difference between word processing, desktop publishing, technical publishing, electronic publishing, etc? GN2. Which do I need? GN3. What is a markup language? GN4. What is SGML? ODA? GN5. What is WYSIWYG? Do I need it? GN6. What is PostScript? GN7. What is TeX? GN8. What are some popular Desktop Publishing packages? GN9. Where can I read more? Specific to troff: TR1. What is troff? Why are there so many questions about it? TR2. How many varieties of troff are there? What are the differences? TR3. What are some of the filters for troff output? TR4. What other troff printer drivers are there? TR5. How do I get my troff to drive my printer? TR6. None of the mentioned packages support *my* printer. Help? TR7. How to I embed PostScript in troff? TR8. What are fonts? How do I add fonts? TR9. What are width tables? TR10. How do I make width tables? TR11. What are: pic, eqn, tbl, grap, refer? TR12. How do I preview my troff on my screen? TR13. I need makedev, but my DWB doesn't come with it. TR14. How can I get nroff/troff for DOS? TR15. What books can I get about DWB? The discussions below are organized in digest-form, so you may scan ahead for "^Subject:" to move from one topic to the next (the ^G command does this in rn), and you may search for "^Subject: GN5" (for example) to jump to the discussion of a particular question. (The caret "^" before "Subject" is a convention of regular expressions that restricts the search to match only at the beginning of a line.) -------- Subject: GN1. What is the difference between word processing, desktop publishing, technical publishing, electronic publishing, etc? Electronic Publishing is an all-encompassing term that means using computers (instead of hot lead) to set type for documents. Although publishing includes a sequence of processes right through distribution, EP tends to emphasize document composition through production of a single master copy. It is helpful to picture a graph with "complexity" along the X axis and "length" along the Y axis. Complexity varies from straight text to footnotes and indexing to tables to line drawings to gray-scale illustration to full color. Length varies from 1 page to 10,000 or more (better make the Y axis logarithmic!) Word processing dominates the lower left of the graph (business letters). Desktop publishing dominates the lower right (advertising layout). Host-based text formatters like troff, TeX and Scribe dominate the upper-left (phone book). Proprietary systems have traditionally dominated the upper right (Sears catalog, encyclopedia); these are being supplanted by hybrids consisting of pieces from the other segments. The middle of the graph is fair ground for everyone but is increasingly the domain of Technical Publication systems like Interleaf and FrameMaker. -------- Subject: GN2. Which do I need? Word processors and Desktop publishers are more than adequate for documents of tens of pages. Because they are mostly limited to PC's and Macintosh, they may be impediments in producing long documents, which would have to be done in digestible chunks (say, a chapter at a time). High-end systems are usually UNIX-based, which means computer power and document capacity are limited only by how much you want to spend. -------- Subject: GN3. What is a markup language? All formatters need to distinguish the text to be printed from instructions about how to print; the latter is called markup. Procedural markup tells the software what to do (space down, invoke a macro); generic markup describes the thing to be printed (heading, cross-reference, etc.) Troff and TeX are examples of procedural markups; ODA and SGML prescribe rules for generic languages; and good macro packages for troff or TeX make them, more-or-less, generic markup languages. -------- Subject: GN4. What is SGML? ODA? SGML is the Standard Generalized Markup Language. SGML is defined in International Standard ISO 8879:1986. SGML is a language for formally describing the structure and contents of documents. SGML is also the syntax used by documents so described. SGML is an important move in the direction of separating information from its presentation, i.e. making different presentations possible for the same information. The better macro packages for TeX and troff attempt to do the same thing. This is in contrast with WYSIWYG - see GN5. SGML is more fully discussed in comp.text.sgml. SGML is the name of a directory at the public FTP site ftp.ifi.uio.no where you can find a (draft) FAQ, a bibliography, and more information. ODA: Office [Open] Document Architecture, takes a similar approach but stresses blind interchange. ODA is defined in the multi-part standard ISO 8613:1988, in the CCITT T.410 series recommendations, and in ECMA standard 101. -------- Subject: GN5. What is WYSIWYG? Do I need it? What-you-see-is-what-you-get: essential for advertising layout, but a useless time-waster for a phone book. WYSIWYG is the opposite of SGML, in that in SGML you know what something is (say, a chapter heading) but you don't know what it looks like; in WYSIWYG you know what it looks like but you don't know what it is. The obvious benefit of WYSIWYG is that the author is aware at all times of the final appearance of the document; the liability is that the vendor gets to choose the internal representation of the document, and may not tell you what it is. The best trade-off would be a WYSIWYG system with a well-documented, usable markup language. We should caution that few of the self-proclaimed WYSIWYG systems actually show the exact same thing on screen as you get on a printer: What You See Is Sort Of Like What You Get. When 300 dpi, 17 inch terminals are common true WYSIWYG will be practical. -------- Subject: GN6. What is PostScript? PostScript is a language for output devices. It does for output devices what Unix does for processors, viz., it allows a common software interface despite differences in hardware platform. PostScript controllers exist for paper printers from 4 pages per minute up to 92 ppm, from 300 dots per inch to over 6000 dpi typesetter, and for film recorders, color printers and X Window terminals. Without PostScript, every text formatter has to understand the idiosyncrasies of every vendor's hardware. See comp.lang.PostScript for more. PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Corporation. -------- Subject: GN7. What is TeX? TeX is a batch formatter similar to troff developed by Don Knuth at Stanford. It is most popular in universities and is freely traded because of the lack of licensing restrictions. ArborText sells a commercial version for big and small (ie PC's) machines. There are various versions for PC-class machines. LaTeX (Leslie Lamports version of TeX) is a more friendly version of the same formatter. It does for TeX what macros does for troff. See comp.text.tex - which contains a FAQ. Oh, and to save yourself sounding like an idiot, the "eX" in "TeX" is pronounced as in "deck", not "sex". -------- Subject: GN8. What are some popular Desktop Publishing packages? Aldus practically invented Desktop publishing with "PageMaker". Ventura is the largest selling of the high-end PC packages. WordPerfect and Word are lower in functionality but less expensive and exist on both DOS and Macintosh. See comp.text.desktop for more information. Interleaf and FrameMaker are workstation-based and are higher in price and functionality, and require more substantial machine resources, but give you more in return. FrameMaker is now available for Windows 3.1, giving transportability between the DOS/Windows, Mac and UNIX world. See comp.text.desktop, comp.text.frame and comp.text.interleaf. -------- Subject: GN9. Where can I read more? Publish!, Business Publishing and Seybold Report are all excellent journals for keeping up to date. There are books devoted to most of the major packages, too many to mention here. Richard Rubinstein's book "Digital Typography", Addison-Wesley is apparently a readable book that goes into the details of composition systems, fonts and reproduction. -------- Subject: TR1. What is troff? Why are there so many questions about it? Troff is one of the oldest text formatters in existence. Because it was distributed as part of the Unix operating system for many years, it is by default on several hundred thousand machines, far more than any other Unix text formatter. It originated in AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1971 and its author was Joseph Ossanna. Its legitimate father was a program called runoff, written at MIT in the 1960's. Because there is no comp.text.troff, additional questions related to troff are shown below. The remainder of the FAQ list is devoted to troff; bail out now if you are not interested. -------- Subject: TR2. How many varieties of troff are there? What are the differences? The original Ossanna troff generates proprietary printer codes for the Wang C/A/T Phototypesetter; we'll call this "CAT Troff". This version comes bundled in many systems, in particular, SunOS, most other Berkeley-derived systems, and is contained in the Xenix Text Processing package. The AT&T, BSD and Xenix variants all differ slightly, but not in any important ways. CAT troff is useless without filters to convert the "CAT codes" to something else, especially since the C/A/T is as common as a California condor. These filters are described later. In 1981, Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories rewrote troff to generate a generic typesetting language. These troffs are called "ditroff" (for device-independent troff) and contain some additional features such as arbitrary line drawing, and more flexible font handling. "Documenter's Workbench" (DWB) is a package containing ditroff and several other typesetting filters. | The latest AT&T version is DWB 3.3, which sold as source code; most commercial binary variants (Elan, SoftQuad, Image Network, etc.) are based on DWB 2.0. The Free Software Foundation distributes a re-engineered version of ditroff called groff. If you have a troff and want to know which it is, type: troff < /dev/null > /dev/null If it responds with "typesetter busy" or "No /dev/cat; use -t or -a", you have CAT troff, otherwise it's ditroff. If you get an answer from: dwbv you have the AT&T release 3.0 or later. The differences are too numerous and subtle to document here, but the variants are about 95% compatible. All are ASCII based, but DWB 3.3 and Groff also accept ISO 8859-1 (aka Latin 1), the Western European character set. -------- Subject: TR3. What are some of the filters for troff output? Psroff is a suite of programs that allow you to translate CAT troff output or ditroff output format into PostScript, HP Laserjet (with incremental font downloading) or ditroff. See description of hp2pbm below for driving printers other than these three. Psroff works with all versions of CAT troff and ditroff, including groff. Psroff allows you to change fonts on the fly (unlike any other CAT troff converter). Psroff has been used to drive HP Laserjet and clone printers, PostScript (including Display PostScript and Sun Pageview), X windows previewers (such as xditview and xtroff), Ghostscript and many others. Psroff comes with a large suite of utility programs that allow you to create, manipulate, display HP Laserjet and PostScript fonts, as well as construct width tables for these fonts from a variety of sources, including TeK PK format, HP SFP, and PostScript. Psroff also comes with a number of other utilities, such as PostScript page reordering, Ascii-2-PostScript converters etc. Psroff 3.0 is the only troff HP Laserjet filter fully | supporting scalable fonts or HPGL/2 graphics on HP LJ III printers. Psroff 3.0 is capable of performing some limited emulation of ditroff features (eg: line drawing) with CAT troff. | Psroff 3.0 is available from comp.sources.unix, volume 24. Or from | ftp.uunet.ca, in /distrib/chris_lewis/psroff (fully patched). Patch | level 14 is current. The author is Chris Lewis, clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca. Adobe Transcript is a commercial package similar to psroff, in that it contains filters for converting ditroff or CAT troff. But only to PostScript. It also contains filters for Ascii-2-PostScript, and is often installed as part of SunOS printcap filters. Adobe Transcript contains a user interface script called "psroff" which should not be confused with the other psroff (but often is). Information can be acquired on its availability by contacting Adobe. Supports psfig with a little hacking (instructions in psfig release) The groff package from the Free-Software-Foundation includes drivers for PostScript, DVI, X and constant-width printers, and the complete suite of troff preprocessors with the exception of grap. It is available via anonymous ftp from several sources (it needs the FSF C++ or AT&T C++ 2.0 compilers to compile, but many binary versions are also available for FTP). Supports character kerning (unlike CAT troff or DWB). Does not contain an HP Laserjet driver. A "dvi2lj" or psroff 3.0 can be used as a HP Laserjet driver for groff. Groff has made some slight changes in the ditroff and width table formats, so use with non-groff drivers may need a little fiddling. Written by James Clark. The latest version is 1.06. The latest version can always be ftped from prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu. -------- Subject: TR4. What other troff printer drivers are there? - thack: CAT to PostScript. c.s.u. archives. For very casual use only. Has no width tables, and can't, for example, make tbl box corners line up.) Available from c.s.u archives. Very simple to build/install. - tpscript: ditroff to PostScript (reasonably good filter) c.s.u archives. Does not support psfig. - jetroff: ditroff to HP Laserjet (no support for III scalable fonts). Commercial version (jetroff 2) no longer available. Jetroff 1.0 (shareware) is available from c.s.m archives. Author: Rick Richardson. Would need some fiddling to work with groff. - troff2lj: CAT troff to HP Laserjet. Limited font handling functionality - package discontinued by author when psroff 2.0 was released. - lcat/lroff: obsolete, should be junked, precursor to psroff. - hp2pbm: not a troff-2-something filter per-se. However, given a HP Laserjet driver, hp2pbm can convert HP Laserjet codes to Jef Poskanzer's PBM format, which permits you to use any of the many output formats supported by PBM. Author: Chris Lewis and Klaus Schallhorn. Hp2pbm and PBM+ are accessible from c.s.m archives. Hp2pbm includes a 24 pin Epson driver and a built-in G3 FAX driver. - cat2desk is a version of lcat/lroff modified to work with Deskjets. Psroff will work with newer deskjets (especially scalable font ones with PCL4), but not older ones (the font format is different) which are PCL3. -------- Subject: TR5. How do I get my troff to drive my printer? a) If you already have CAT troff and you don't need pic or grap: Your best bet is psroff if you want to drive printers supported by psroff (PostScript, HP Laserjet, ditroff filters, PBM+ supported devices (including Epson 24 pin, FAX). Transcript is an alternative for PostScript output (but doesn't allow you to mount fonts, no drawing support). b) You already have ditroff: You may already have a driver for your printer. Check. If not, your best bets are jetroff, psroff, tpscript, transcript. c) You don't have a troff or, you have CAT troff and you need pic and grap: Get "a DWB", such as groff (no grap), DWB 3, or one of the commercial variants. -------- Subject: TR6. None of the mentioned packages support *my* printer. Help? This area is not entered into lightly. Look for a commercial or free package that supports your device. Failing that, try to acquire (legally!) the source code for another device and modify it. The AT&T documentation "Troff User's Manual" has a Reference section that completely documents the ditroff language. SunOS and Psroff 3.0 documentation contain descriptions of the CAT troff language. Psroff 3.0 is designed for drop-in drivers, and may be the easiest to extend. Coupled with hp2pbm, psroff3.0 can probably drive just about any kind of printer that supports raster graphics with relatively little trouble (see Epson 24 pin driver for guidance). If you can get a PostScript driver and are running on current SunOS, you could consider developing a NeWSprint driver for your printer. NeWSprint is Sun's NeWS (PostScript language interpreter extended for driving displays; not the same thing as "Display PostScript"(tm). This may be easier than developing a troff driver, since all NeWSprint really needs is the ability to send a bitmap to a printer. Source and developer's documentation are shipped standard with NeWSprint. Thack is ideal for quick hacks with CAT troff for printers that have dynamically scalable fonts (aside from the fact that thack has no facilities for building width tables). -------- Subject: TR7. How to I embed PostScript in troff? There are two methods: - including "absolute" PostScript. PostScript that knows where it goes on the page, and decides its own scaling. All versions of ditroff support this one way or another. CAT troff does as well when coupled with psroff. This is most often supported by some permutation of \! or \X'...' directives. - including PostScript, automatically scaling and placing the image. This requires that the PostScript be EPS (so that the size and origin of the image is accessible). Groff and DWB 3.3 have facilities for including EPS files and automatically placing/scaling them on the page, including leaving space in the troff text for the image. Psfig (c.s.u archives) is a troff preprocessor which will permit this sort of automatic placement/scaling with an older version of ditroff (such as DWB 2.1) as long as the backend printer driver understands it. Psroff 3.0 and Adobe Transcript support psfig with ditroff, but only Psroff 3.0 will support psfig with CAT troff. Caution: many PC and MAC graphics packages generate sloppy PostScript which cannot be gracefully included in other documents. -------- Subject: TR8. What are fonts? How do I add fonts? A font is a set of characters in an specific typeface. Unlike TeX, troff does not consider the same typeface at different sizes to be different fonts. You have to make the width tables, install them, and tell the troff filter how to emit/request the fonts. The details differ from one package to another. Check the documentation. -------- Subject: TR9. What are width tables? Both CAT troff and ditroff need to know the width of each character that you use. The widths of each character (along with some additional characteristics) are arranged in a file for each font. There are basically five different width table formats: 1) CAT troff: uses a binary table of 224 unsigned chars. 2) MIPS (and RISC/Ultrix) CAT troff uses an ASCII dump of (1) 3) DWB 2.x and several of the commercial variants use an ASCII format that is compiled into a binary form by a special program called "makedev". 4) DWB 3.x uses the ASCII format mentioned in (3) - doesn't need to be compiled. 5) Groff uses the ASCII format mentioned in (4) with minor variations. If the width tables are wrong, character spacing will look funny - up to and including overlapping characters, and broken right justification. -------- Subject: TR10. How do I make width tables? Creating them is not hard. Getting the actual metrics sometimes is. The AT&T documentation "Troff User's Manual" describes the DWB width table format. Your DWB may already have a manual page for it. Psroff 3.0 contains documentation on DWB and CAT troff format width tables. DWB 3.3, Psroff 3.0 and tpscript each have a utility for automatically creating width tables by sucking the data out of a PostScript device. Psroff 3.0 and jetroff have utilities for creating width tables from HP laserjet fonts. Psroff 3.0 can convert between any of the 5 width table formats. Consult the documentation to find out where to put the files. -------- Subject: TR11. What are: pic, eqn, tbl, grap, refer? These are the basic troff preprocessors shipped with DWB: - pic allows you to draw arbitrary line-drawing graphics in a machine-independent fashion. - eqn allows you to construct mathmatical equations. - tbl provides a mechanism for specifying and displaying automatically sized/configured tables - grap uses pic to construct graphs. - refer provides a mechanism for searching for and formatting bibligraphic references. Neither pic nor grap are included with CAT troff, but eqn, tbl and frequently refer are present. Groff does not at present support grap. -------- Subject: TR12. How do I preview my troff on my screen? a) X windows: xditview and xtroff (X11R5 contrib directory, xtroff also from ftp.cs.toronto.edu) and gxditview (from groff) will preview ditroff format (groff requires gxditview), including psroff 3.0's ditroff output from CAT troff. b) Display PostScript (ie: AIX 3 & DEC dpsexec, NeXT, Sun Pageview, Ultrascript): any PostScript generating troff. (Theoretically at least. May need a teensy bit of PostScript hacking to get a reasonable pager (psroff3.0 has this built in). Pageview and Ultrascript have some limitations so may not work with a specific PostScript generator) c) Others: You can probably find a PBM converter for it, so use a Laserjet-generating troff configuration plus hp2pbm. (eg: Sun rasters, 3b1 screens, EGA, VGA, GIFF, TIFF etc.) | I preview on X by generating PCL with psroff, converting | to PBM with hp2pbm, then display with pbm2Xd (part of hp2pbm) | and xwud (part of X windows). d) Others: You may be able to find a DVI driver for it, so use a DVI-generating troff configuration (namely, groff's ditdvi) and use the appropriate dvi2<whatever> filter.