Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!mtuxo!lzfme!jwi
From: jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Looking for troff to word processor/page layout
Summary: Awk translator
Message-ID: <1472@lzfme.att.com>
Date: 11 Jul 89 14:05:37 GMT
References: <237@6sigma.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T, Lincroft NJ
Lines: 42

> Brian Matthews writes:
>
> I've got a bunch of text in troff (actually eroff), using pic and tbl.  I
> need to get this text into either Word, Word Perfect, or Ventura on the
> PC, with as much formatting intact as possible.  So, if you have anything
> that takes troff as input and spits out one of the above, or something
> that can be converted to one of the above (for instance, Word on the Mac,
> or MacWrite), I'd appreciate hearing from you.  Note that even if you
> have a partial, hacked together solution, or even a pointer to a
> solution, I'm still interested.  If I can't find anything, I'll have to
> transfer just the text, and redo the formatting by hand, so any little
> bit helps!

Translating from the MM macros to WordPerfect is a reasonable job in
awk (I expect to do it later this year). Each MM macro generates one
or more WP codes and a style on/off pair. EQN won't translate. TBL
won't translate to WP but may translate to Ventura Publisher,
Professional edition. PIC won't translate to WP and may or may not
translate to Ventura -- if you have actually written PIC, it should
translate okay, but if you have generated PIC from CIP it almost
certainly will be too complex. You should consider translating the
PIC stuff to HPGL or EPS and then including it in a WP figure box as
an external file (similarly for Ventura).

Note: You may want to translate MM to WordPerfect and then use
that as input to Ventura. MM won't translate to Ventura anywhere
near as well as it will translate to WP.

Note: You can probably handle some minor toff formatting in addition
to the MM macros, but if you are doing the full course (and in
particular, if you are using troff macros), you haven't got much of
a chance.

Jim Winer ..!lzfme!jwi (Usually unable to reply to email outside AT&T)

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