Subject: Re: rfc publication suggestions

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 09:34:33 -0700 (MST)

> From: "Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" <[email-masked]>

> ...
> > No rocket science (but maybe some patience) is required to write nroff.
> > Thanks to groff, typesetting nroff has become free.
>
> No rocket science, but perhaps archaeology.
> In the early 1980s, a unix box (68ks, vaxen, et.al.) came
> with a multi-volume manuals, including an nroff guide.
> In this millennium, not all distros have nroff guides.

As far as I can tell, all current UNIX (including Linux) distributions
include groff (or nroff/troff/pic/tbl/etc.) and both mdoc (or man)
and ms macros.  UNIX (including Linux) distributions have thousands
of "man pages" written with the mdoc or man macros.  For "nroff guides"
on your own systems, try `man -k roff` and `man -k mdoc`.

If you are a technical person and so a past, present, or potential
RFC author, you will have your own systems and chances better than
even that at least some of them will have `man` and `nroff`.
If you don't have such a system, then check the web for info.  
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=nroff+macros finds
23,900 pages.

> Who is still using this dino technology anyway?

Most RFC authors use that "dino technology," even if they don't 
realize it.  Read RFC 2223, including the first paragraph on page 5:

]  Most of the RFCs are processed by the RFC Editor with the unix
]  "nroff" program using a very simple set of the formatting commands
]  (or "requests") from the "ms" macro package (see the Appendix).  If a
]  memo submitted to be an RFC has been prepared by the author using
]  nroff, it is very helpful to let the RFC Editor know that when it is
]  submitted.

Many and perhaps most technical people in the computer world outside
the Redmond and related corners use nroff at least to read system
documentation.  If you don't and don't know anyone who does, then look
carefully at yourself.  You might be a technical person in the Redmond
or similar corner of the world, but around here, chances are at least
even that if you don't have any current access to or use of nroff,
then you are not as involved with technical stuff as you might think.
That's not to say that you must like troff, but that computer technical
people have trouble escaping it, just as people in the mathematics
world have trouble escaping another "dino [markup] technology."

Are there ms2html or ms2xml equivalents to the many man2html scripts
and programs?  When I asked that question of Google, I found only hints.
I did find some talk about XML to nroff converters.

Non-technical contributors to this thread might be interested to learn
that many HTML UNIX "man pages" mechanically generated from nroff sources,
often on the fly by cgi scripts.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: "Melinda Shore" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 12:07:05 -0500

> even that at least some of them will have `man` and `nroff`.

A draft formatted with Word recently crossed my
path, and the formatting was *so* bad that the
document wasn't readable (for some reason something
in the Word -> text process deleted all vertical
whitespace).  I reformatted it with nroff under
UWIN, which really worked very well and held no
surprises whatsoever.  So, it's not even necessary
to have access to a Unix or Unix-ish OS to use
nroff for document production.

Melinda

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:03:30 -0500

At 12:07 15/03/01, Melinda Shore wrote:
>  I reformatted it with nroff under

        Good point, but one doesn't even need UWIN.  
GNU runoff (groff) is available as a pre-packaged 
download for Windows.

        (No, I don't have a URL handy, interested folks
should try their favourite search engine to locate 
a suitable binary).

Ran

---

From: Bora Akyol <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 12:31:39 -0800

>nroff for document production.

This one is because of a bad printer driver in Windows until 2K. 
Win2K generic text printer does not have this problem. Don't ask me 
how I know.

Bora

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From: "Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 17:57:50 +0700

Vernon Schryver wrote:

> For "nroff guides" on your own systems, 
> try `man -k roff` and `man -k mdoc`.

Script started on Fri Mar 16 17:37:39 2001
% hostname
rmsbase.vlsm.org
% /sbin/kernelversion
2.2
% man -k roff
roff: nothing appropriate
% man -f mdoc
mdoc: nothing appropriate
% exit
exit
Script done on Fri Mar 16 17:38:18 2001

> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=nroff+macros finds

This is exactly the problem: I could not find any
Leslie-Lamport-quality-HOWTO-document for nroff.

> Most RFC authors use that "dino technology," 

First of all, I define "dino technology" as
something where the average age of its producers 
(not just users) constantly increases. 

Jon Crowcroft wrote:
> (rhetorical question, dont answer that:-)

Well, an eye for an eye, a rhetorical question 
for a rhetorical one :-).
I am just wondering what you are going to do with
your private video tapes. Keep them as is, or
transfer them to VCDs, or transfer them to DVDs?
Same question for QIC-150s, Reel tapes, etc.

regards,

-- 
Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim - VLSM-TJT - http://rms46.vlsm.org
- Blowfish, n (coup d'poisson) --- a secure blow job -----

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:53:25 +0000 (GMT)

> Script done on Fri Mar 16 17:38:18 2001

Since both nroff and groff are installed on most linux systems, you're
being disingenuous. 

man groff or man nroff work fine.

L.

<[email-masked]>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>