Re: PSD, SMM and USD manuals [was: Re: Shell tutorial added]

[markucz%gmail.com@localhost]

>   | Heirloom troff doesn't complain at all *and* gets the job done.
> 
> Sorry, never heard of that one, what is it?  What's it's availability
> and licensing?   That is, is that something that might be better for NetBSD
> than groff, or is it something commercial and totally irrelevant?
See here[1]. It's basically OpenSolaris's troff with some improvements. It
doesn't have as many drivers as groff (no HTML or PDF output) but it can use
OTF fonts and supports UTF-8. There's only one unessential program written in
C++ which may be safely left uninstalled so it's fit to replace groff in base.
IMHO it's much better, too.

> As long as groff is the in-tree formatter, that's most likely what we
> need to have work.
Yeah, I guess NetBSD is stuck with groff, or so it seems.

> I have converted a bunch of my own stuff from real troff (either the
> original, or ditroff) to groff in the past, so maybe I can help with
> that, but I am certainly no groff expert (I'm more likely to do things
> in original troff style, and just force groff to handle it, than do it
> the blessed groff "improved" way).
It's great to hear that. Knowing how to force groff do anything it doesn't
want to will be essential, especially in the case of USD:21 as mentioned
below.

>   | "Troff User's Manual" in particular is impossible for groff to handle.
> Since that is one of the ones I personally miss most (I'm finding I
> need to rely on old printed copies when I need *roff assistance) I
> might try starting with that one...
Drop me a line if you decide to go for it. I can send you the file I have
from last year as a reference. I can't reproduce it yet but I'm getting
close. I believe it looks pretty much as it should.

Best regards



[1] http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/doctools.html