Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!anise!ivucsb!todd From: t...@ivucsb.sba.ca.us (Todd Day) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: C News documentation written with -ms nroff macro Message-ID: <1989Jul15.195651.5979@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> Date: 15 Jul 89 19:56:51 GMT Reply-To: t...@ivucsb.sba.ca.us (Todd Day) Organization: Disillusioned Graduate Hackers, Santa Barbara, CA Lines: 17 Where can I get the -ms macro for nroff? I can't even begin to make heads or tails of the C News notebook without it. I've been told I need a source license for the -s macro. Is this true? If not, could someone please send it to me? If so, could someone please format all the dox in the notebook of C News and send them to me? Also, if so, in the future, could developers please include the macro they formated all of their documentation with? Or, include formated versions of their dox? Thanks. -- Todd Day | t...@ivucsb.sba.ca.us | ivucsb!t...@anise.acc.com "Don't call me white... I'm a European-American!"
Newsgroups: news.software.b Path: utzoo!henry From: he...@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: C News documentation written with -ms nroff macro Message-ID: <1989Jul16.021612.13393@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <1989Jul15.195651.5979@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> Date: Sun, 16 Jul 89 02:16:12 GMT In article <1989Jul15.195651.5...@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> t...@ivucsb.sba.ca.us (Todd Day) writes: >Where can I get the -ms macro for nroff? ... For a long time the -ms macros were part of all Unix distributions. Then came System V: "consider it standard". :-[ >I've been told I need a source license for the -s macro. Is this >true? ... Unfortunately, the -ms macros are indeed covered by Bell licensing. However, you shouldn't need a source licence to get them -- all you need is a Unix supplied by a sensible company. Complain to your vendor. (Actually, check first to make sure that "nroff -ms" actually doesn't work -- some systems have it but don't document it.) >... Also, if so, in the future, could developers >please include the macro they formated all of their documentation >with? Or, include formated versions of their dox? The problem with the former is licensing. The problem with the latter is that any time a document changes even slightly, the formatted version undergoes major upheavals. This is significant if you're trying to send out updates as patches: you have a choice of massive patches to the formatted versions, or letting the formatted versions get out of date. All that being said... I don't understand why this is such a problem. It's not as if the C News documentation did anything elaborate. You should be able to read most of it by simply ignoring the macros entirely and just reading the text. And all *that* being said, the next C News patch will include tmac.cn, a quick-and-dirty fake of enough of the -ms macros for the C News docs. We find the situation annoying ourselves, and the docs make so little use of the macro package that it only took an hour or two to build an adequate fake from scratch. -- $10 million equals 18 PM | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology (Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu! uunet!toro!nick From: n...@toro.UUCP (Nicholas Jacobs) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: C News documentation written with -ms nroff macro Message-ID: <736@toro.UUCP> Date: 20 Jul 89 19:07:06 GMT References: <1989Jul15.195651.5979@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> <1989Jul16.021612.13393@utzoo.uucp> Reply-To: n...@toro.UUCP (Nicholas Jacobs) Organization: Merrill Lynch Municipal Securities Systems Development, NY Lines: 32 In article <1989Jul16.021612.13...@utzoo.uucp> he...@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <1989Jul15.195651.5...@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> t...@ivucsb.sba.ca.us (Todd Day) writes: >>Where can I get the -ms macro for nroff? ... [ text deleted... ] >And all *that* being said, the next C News patch will include tmac.cn, >a quick-and-dirty fake of enough of the -ms macros for the C News docs. >We find the situation annoying ourselves, and the docs make so little >use of the macro package that it only took an hour or two to build an >adequate fake from scratch. >-- >$10 million equals 18 PM | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology >(Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu When I received my B News 2.11 tape from NCR, it contained a macro package called mn. I realize that this Yet Another Macro Package to learn :-) (plus it was written by different authors, etc.), but maybe its worthwhile to settle on some standard (meaning not tied to anybody's release of Unix) set of macros for USENET software releases. Of course maybe in Release 4, we'll get the best of both worlds wrt troff (hah!). Oddly enough, on our NCR 32/600's we have the ms macros and they're pretty vanilla SysV boxes (or so I thought). BTW, I'm currently porting C News onto the NCR Tower. If anyone has already done this please stop me and send diffs... Just a thought, Nicholas Jacobs UUCP: ...!uunet!toro!nick Internet: toro!n...@uunet.uu.net AT&T: (212) 236-3230
Newsgroups: news.software.b Path: utzoo!henry From: he...@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: C News documentation written with -ms nroff macro Message-ID: <1989Jul21.170545.15365@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <1989Jul15.195651.5979@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> <1989Jul16.021612.13393@utzoo.uucp> <736@toro.UUCP> Date: Fri, 21 Jul 89 17:05:45 GMT In article <7...@toro.UUCP> n...@toro.UUCP (Nicholas Jacobs) writes: >When I received my B News 2.11 tape from NCR, it contained a macro package >called mn. I realize that this Yet Another Macro Package... Indeed it is. Quite unnecessarily, too. We think designing a new user interface for a macro package is grossly misplaced creativity; there is nothing badly wrong with the existing ones, especially -ms, unless your needs are seriously exotic. We wrote the C News documentation with -ms simply because that's the one we know and like. Since we never do anything hairy with the macros, you can read most of the documentation easily by just ignoring the macros entirely and reading the words. The ms-subset-lookalike that will be in the next patch was a couple of hours of work for me one evening, when I was feeling bored and wanted to try something different. We don't think it's very important, but since I did do it, it's worth including. Had we started from scratch with the aim of including our own macro package, we almost certainly would have taken the same approach -- reimplementing a -ms subset. We see no point in being deliberately incompatible with existing practice unless it buys us something important. There is a problem in that half the existing world speaks -ms and the other half speaks -mm (we will quietly refrain from discussing brain-dead suppliers of so-called "UNIX" who don't give you any formatter at all...), but being compatible with half the world is better than nothing. -- 1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu