troff to postscript conversion

[ferguson ct 71078]

Following is a summary of the mail responses I received to my posting
asking for a troff to postscript converter.  I should have mentioned
that I needed it for a SUN Spark SLC.  Thanks for all the responses.

Chuck

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From: gengenba at forwiss.uni-passau.de (Michael Gengenbach)

Use groff from the Free Software Foundation's GNU project. It is
available free via anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu.

We use it and have no problems.

Regards

   Michael

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From: tj at mlb.semi.harris.com (Tim Johnson)

I have a program of unknown origin called ptroff for sun's that
takes roff input and prints postscript.  Let me know if you are
interested.

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From: rcw at epg.harris.com (R. Christopher Withers)

If you have access to a Sun with either Transcript or FrameMaker loaded
you can use ptroff under Transcript/bin or use FrameMaker to import
the file using the troff filter.  FrameMaker only prints to postscript
devices.

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From: ratazzie at LONEX.RADC.AF.MIL (Edward P. Ratazzi)

If you're using a Sun, and you have the TranScript software option,
you can use 'ptroff', which is a PostScript-troff program.  ptroff
supports -me -ms -man, etc.

Hope this helps.

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From: Erik Naggum (the Internet Purist) <enag at ifi.uio.no>

The GNU project has produced a `groff' which outputs PostScript among
other things.  To compile it, you need G++, for which you need GCC.
This is all freely available, for certain values of "free".

The C++ code in groff is reportedly _extremely_ clean and easily
portable.  The C code in G++ or GCC is, on the other hand, not known
for this quality.  GCC is supported on a number of platforms, for a
suitable value of "supported", which means that there exist a solution
such that you will not spend hours and hours trying to do what other
people have done before you.  You may find a pointer to that solution
by contacting the Free Software Foundation, or read some of the gnu.*
groups for a few days.  I can't help you with that.

We get these relevant gnu.* newsgroups here at the University of Oslo:

	U     2: gnu.g++.announce
	U    44: gnu.g++.bug
	U    58: gnu.g++.help
	U     7: gnu.g++.lib.bug
	U     0: gnu.gcc.announce
	U    47: gnu.gcc.bug
	U    26: gnu.gcc.help

none of which I read.  They are matched with mailing-lists off some
machine at MIT, possibly prep.ai.mit.edu.  Check their ftp library.

I use groff, and am happy with it.  I don't support GNU's philosophy,
but they have better products than nearly all vendors.

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From: tcurrey at x102a (currey tom 76327)

You might want to check out a program called "psroff".

it is on   Machine : uunet.uu.net
	   file    : pub/psroff*


There are several files here.


		Hope this helps
		Tom Currey
		tcurrey at elvis.ess.harris.com

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From: Russ Evans <E_GS18 at vaxa.nerc-murchison.ac.uk>

I assume you're on Unix.  (Someone posted a response about MS-DOS, which 
sounds a little unlikely).  The answer depends on whether your troff is
the ancient CAT troff or the newer ditroff stuff.  Find out by trying to
invoke troff.  If it comes back with a message about 'Typesetter busy', 
you've got CAT troff.  You want to get a copy of Chris Lewis's excellent
psroff, version 2 patchlevel 7.  Patchlevel 5 was distributed in 
comp.sources.unix recently, and can be obtained from uunet.  Patch 6 deals
with Ultrix/RISC (I helped Chris on that stuff) and patch 7 tidies up a few
loose ends.  Patchlevel 5 will probably work fine for you.  If necessary,
you can get the patches from Chris - I don't have his address handy, but 
it's in the distribution files.  

If you have ditroff, I'm not the best person to advise you.

Russ Evans
e_gs18 at va.nmh.ac.uk

Chuck Ferguson             Harris Government Information Systems Division
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