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From: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: are there any troff - gif (- ps) converters??
Message-ID: <1990Dec13.134405.13680@robobar.co.uk>
Date: 13 Dec 90 13:15:13 GMT
References: <994@ecicrl.UUCP> <1990Dec12.154230.23982@cbnewsl.att.com>
Sender: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo)
Organization: Robobar Ltd., Perivale, Middx., ENGLAND.
Lines: 51

npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes:

npn> In another posting, Chris Lewis says "it would be nice" if
npn> AT&T put all this in public domain. Nice for him, I guess.
npn> Somehow, AT&T doesn't see it that way.

I didn't read it that way at all, after all what Chris *said* was:

clewis> T'would be nice if AT&T released troff into PD (or redistributable
clewis> copyrighted) then those people who's vendors did notice and dropped
clewis> it could get a troff.  Without paying an arm and a leg, or simply
clewis> being unable to get ANYTHING at all.

clewis> CAT troff with psroff is production quality output, though, of course,
clewis> true ditroff is better because of some of the additional features.

Now, the way I read that, it looks like Chris would be happy if AT&T
released *otroff* under a free redistribution license.

Yes, *otroff*.  It's much easier to justify that to your boss, isn't it?
The way I see it, it goes something like this:

	"Let BSD distribute the otroff (that they already have) but
	 release the 32V strings on it.  People can then use it in
	 conjunction with Chris Lewis' otroff->postcript converter,
	 then 1) we get to retain *roff -man as our manpage format,
	 and 2) People will continue to use *roff.  *Then* when
	 they're well and truly entrenched, and need the extra
	 facilities that DWB buys them, they get to persuade their
	 bosses to fork out for DWB"

This is not so different from how UNIX became popular.  Nils-Peter, please
consider asking your boss about this ?

Looking hard at it, it does look like there are two separate issues,
i) the availability of otroff and ii) the bundling of DWB with AT&T UNIX.

clewis> Well, actually, you could consider CAT troff to be the standard troff
clewis> and DWB 2 & 3 to be minor aberrations... 

Heh.  Yes, well.  True enough, but if otroff becomes less and less available,
anytroff loses out completely to TeX (Heaven Forbid!)

Of course these arguments only make sense because Chris chose to make his
otroff->(ditroff|postscript|hp-pcl) converter available without charge.
In the light of that, it would be nice if we didn't mistreat/misquote
him in this newsgroup or anywhere else.  A good chap like that deserves
to be treated well, no ?

-- 
ronald@robobar.co.uk +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)