From: utzoo!decvax!wivax!linus!genrad!wjh12!foxvax1!brunix!rayssd!dhb
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.sources
Title: Re: Idea for useful utility
Article-I.D.: rayssd.1088
Posted: Thu Apr 21 10:51:28 1983
Received: Mon Apr 25 20:05:47 1983
References: utcsrgv.1297

I have written a program called "format" which will read in
nroff source files and determine which options are needed.
The program actually goes one step further than what you
suggested in that after it figures out what options to use
it actually constructs the command and executes it.  There
is also an option to just report the result back to the user
instead of executing them.  The program is currently set up
to be specific to nroff because we do not have a photo-typesetter,
but with minor modifications can be made to handle troff.
We plan to upgrade the program ourselves within the next few
months because we are getting a laser printer (or some similar
device) and will be wanting to use troff.  The way we plan to
do it is to make a second version of "format" called "tformat"
which can handle the troff options (i.e. eqn instead of neqn).
I will post the source and the manual page seperately to
net.sources.  The program will currently handle tbl, neqn,
ms macros, me macros, man macros, and mm macros (PWB).  It
also recognizes .so requests, and .de requests which redefine
standard macros.

		Dave Brierley
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