Hi Robert, On 12-Mar-05 Robert Dodier wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I have a couple of simple questions which I hope you > can help me with. The files I am working with (composed > in 1985) are composed with MS macros. > > (1) The postscript output option (-T ps) puts the stuff > between .DS/.DE in variable-width font, although I would > have expected fixed width font. Is there a way to cajole > groff into considering .DS/.DE stuff to be fixed width font? > It's OK with me if the answer is "yes, throw in this > macro .FOOBAR before every .DS" or something like that.
There's no reason to expect fixed-width font for what is between .DE and .DE -- what you get is, without additional measures, in the ambient font (i.e. what is in use when ".DE" is invoked). You can, however, easily arrange for a special font for such displays. For instance .DS .ft CR ...text of display... .ft .DE and then it will be in Courier Roman (a fixed-width font) for the duration of the display, reverting afterwards to what it was before. > (2) Is there a way to generate tex or latex output from groff? The default output device with groff is the PostScript device (as if you had invoked it with "groff -Tps ... "). You can produce TeX-compatible "device-independent" output with groff -Tdvi ... -o TeX_file.dvi troff_file which will generate a ".dvi" file to which you can apply the TeX commands for generating device-specific output (e.g. dvips to convert the .dvi file to PostScript). Beware, however, that a lot of the characters in the devdvi fonts have different groff names from the corresponding characters in (say) the devps fonts. What you *cannot* do (at any rate not using groff) is convert a groff "source" file into a TeX/LaTeX "source" file on which you can then run TeX (or edit as a TeX file). Even if there was some program which claimed to do such a conversion, you should not expect good results. The two programs, groff and TeX, are conceived along different lines, and neither would map onto the other. The fact that each offers users a rich palette of possibilities to define their own macros, etc., means that a conversion program would have to cope with anything of this kind that the user might think of. > I've RTFM and searched the mailing list archives but I wasn't > able to find answers to these questions. If anyone can shed > light on these questions I will be very much obliged. > > All the best, > Robert Dodier It would be worth studying the overall structure of a groff run. Apart from the use of pre-processors (whose function is merely to convert passage of "special description" -- e.g. the equation description language "eqn", or the graph description language "pic" or the table description language "tbl" -- into groff language, prior to submitting everything to groff for processing), groff takes an input stream, processes it according to its contents and the device specified with "-T", and outputs a stream in "intermediate language" (described in "man groff_out"). This intermediate-language stream is then submitted to a device-specific post-processor -- grops for PostScript, grodvi for ".dvi", grohtml for HTML, grotty for fixed-width terminal output, etc. Already encapsulated in the intermediate stream are many fine details of the formatting, in particular precise positions and motions for the placement of characters, and detailed specifications of font changes, etc. This is all at a much lower level than what TeX source code corresponds to, and a postprocessor to generate TeX source would have to undo a lot of this. (In passing, I wonder what one might call such a post-processor; "grotex"? Maybe "grotesk"?) Hoping this helps, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 12-Mar-05 Time: 01:34:48 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Groff mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff
