Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsl!npn
From: npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Documentor's Workbench Install problems on Sun
Summary: Documenter's WorkBench 3.1 solves many 2.0 problems.
Keywords: ditroff, dwb, troff
Message-ID: <1990Sep25.184555.10631@cbnewsl.att.com>
Date: 25 Sep 90 18:45:55 GMT
References: <2047@cfa209.cfa250.harvard.edu> <1990Sep19.122319.26279@tukki.jyu.fi> <1354@mtxinu.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 32



Although the official AT&T version of Documenter's WorkBench
has been the ancient DWB 2.0, inside Bell Labs we have been
using more modern versions, as described in several of
Brian Kernighan's papers.  This latest version of troff
has been incorporated into DWB 3.1, now available from
UNIX System Laboratories, and their European and Pacific
affiliates. DWB 3.1 also includes excellent PostScript
support, especially for picture inclusion (e.g., PC-generated
PostScript).
Other major differences are: a new drawing program called
Picasso, based on pic but featuring color, gray-scale,
rotation, scaling and other goodies. A batch (pic-like)
version is in DWB 3.1, but you can also get an X Window
version (WYSIWYG drawing for troff users, at last!).
New troff uses readable ascii font descriptions rather
than the old ".OUT" binaries.

There was some griping about price in several articles.
DWB is sold by USL as *source*. That's why it's
expensive. We are counting on vendors and VARs buying
the source license, then reselling binary at a reasonable
price. So far, we have been able to compile one set
of source for troff, eqn, tbl, pic, picasso etc for
Amdahl UTS, AT&T 6386 and 3B2, Sun 3, Sun 4, VAX 86xx
and Pyramid. To the best of our ability, the code is
fully portable and should require no extra effort.

I would advise anyone who has the older version to upgrade
to DWB 3.1. It's supported, it's reliable (used by
thousands of internal AT&T people), it has a future.