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From: scott@prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Holt)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: C/A/T Phototypesetter output from troff?
Keywords: troff, C/A/T, Phototypesetter
Message-ID: <21022@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 1 Feb 91 20:12:27 GMT
References: <8709@hub.ucsb.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 46

In article <8709@hub.ucsb.edu> raj@pollux.geog.ucsb.edu (Richard A Johnson) writes:
>I can't find a way to make troff on the RS/6000 produce the standard C/A/T
>Phototypesetter files which it produces on every other version of Unix!
>Apparently IBM has changed this command SIGNIFICANTLY!

IBM did not change troff - AT&T did - many years ago. The versions of troff
which produce C/A/T output are archaic at best.

Some (probably inacurate) historical perspective.

The version of troff which produced C/A/T output was originally released
with version 7 UNIX and eventually became a standard feature of BSD. Its
remained with that system ever since and continues to be release with BSD
based systems such as Sun OS.

A number of years ago (1984?), AT&T rewrote troff and bundled it with a product
called "Documenter's Workbench": troff, nroff, pic, grap, enq & tbl plus macros.
This version produces device independent output which must be filtered through
a driver to produce output for a particular output device. This implementation
is commonly known as ditroff. Though officially an unbundled AT&T product, 
a number of vendors include it with their System V based systems - IBM and
Apple come to mind. 

>
>Is there a way to get C/A/T Phototypesetter output from troff?
>Lacking that, is there a way to get a standard Postscript file from troff?
>
>ANY help would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!

Unless someone wrote a C/A/T driver for ditroff, I doubt it - I have heard that
there have not been any C/A/T devices sold since the late 70's anyway.

A number of ditroff drivers for various output devices are sold. The most
famous is probably Transcript from Adobe. Being that is from Adobe, you
can probably guess what it does - PostScript. In addition to Transcript,
a package called devps is (was?) sold by a company called Pipeline Associates.
Lastly, a number of vendors have licensed and enhanced Documenter's Workbench -
Elan and Image Network come to mind. There was an article in UNIX Review about
a year or more ago which reviewed the various packages.

- Scott
-- 
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Scott Holt                 		Internet: scott@prism.gatech.edu
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