Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:51:42 +0100 From: Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com> To: Peter Jeremy <PeterJeremy@optushome.com.au>, Emanuel Strobl <Emanuel.strobl@gmx.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: groff alternative? Message-ID: <4272BA7E.2090201@dial.pipex.com> In-Reply-To: <20050429200029.GC232@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au> References: <200504262010.49509@harrymail> <86k6mo0xmh.fsf@xps.des.no> <427157B7.6040203@mac.com> <200504290053.51912@harrymail> <427177FD.50809@dial.pipex.com> <20050429200029.GC232@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Peter Jeremy wrote: >On Fri, 2005-Apr-29 00:55:41 +0100, Alex Zbyslaw wrote: > > >>Since no-one had a sensible answer, why not try a version of original >>nroff from say 4.3BSD. Hunting around, I found this: >>http://www.tuhs.org/. Hopefully the most used macros will have stayed >>the same. >> >> > >Actually, they haven't. The FreeBSD man pages are written using mdoc(7), >not man(7). The current version of mdoc(7) in FreeBSD needs long names - >which are supported by ditroff and groff but not the older nroff. > > Ever a sucker for punishment, I downloaded 4.3bsd nroff and pretty much it seems to work*. This is on 4.11. The tmac.an macros load tmac.doc. There may be some new macros defined since the days of 4.3 but I doubt anything critical has changed. Peter, did you mean that the macro definition file uses long definitions? If so, I don't think that matters since I proposed using the original tman.an/tmac.doc macros which would obviously be compatible. Just that new man pages might use a macro which wasn't defined in those old definitions files. A tar.gz is a massive 124K (source only) so, Emanuel, if you want to try it I can mail it to you. (It was you asked the original question, wasn't it?) * I have formatted a massive 3 random manual pages, and got one bad definition, but the page viewed fine. If anyone cares to repeat the feat, I used the 4.3BSD-Reno src. I needed src.tar.gz and usr.tar.gz form which I extracted usr.bin/roff, libdata/term/tablpr, libdata/term and share/tmac. I put the whole thing under /usr/local/43bsd, fixed a couple pathname.h files and wrote the stupidest shell script because Makefiles created umpteen problems. When it all compiles in 5 seconds, makefiles are somewhat moot :-). In usr.bin/roff/nroff cc -c -DNROFF -DVMUNIX -I../common_source *.c cd ../common_source cc -c -DNROFF -DVMUNIX -I. *.c cd ../nroff cc -o nroff *.o ../common_source/*.o -lcompat And fixed the hardwired pathnames in tmac.an. The list of 4BSD archive sites is at http://www.tuhs.org/archive_sites.html and I used the York/UK one. --Alex PS I have redirected back to questions where this thread started. Doesn't seem that relevant to current.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4272BA7E.2090201>