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From: jmr@motown.UUCP (John M. Ritter)
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.text
Subject: Use `vi' for business office word-processing and form letters
Message-ID: <184@motown.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Sep-86 12:12:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: motown.184
Posted: Wed Sep 17 12:12:14 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Sep-86 22:22:51 EDT
References: <1246@kitty.UUCP> <6902@ki4pv.UUCP> <352@maynard.UUCP>
Organization: Allied Corporation Tax Department, Morristown, NJ
Lines: 25
Keywords: It's all built-in anyway!
Xref: mnetor net.unix:5528 net.text:995

> In article <6902@ki4pv.UUCP> tanner@ki4pv.UUCP (who else) writes:
> >The reason that our customers have gone to "lyrix" instead of using
> >what we use for \fBall\fR of our document preparation is simple:
> >our customers need to print form letters &c. to their customers.
> >
> >There appears to be no easy or clean way to merge data into nroff --
> >the data would have to be prepared with extra new-lines, and as for
> >iterating to print a hundred copies -- looks like it would be hairy.
> 
> Funny, I whipped off a little shell script to do just that today.
> Something like this (typed from memory, it was on a different system,
> so I may have dropped a backslash or a quote somewhere):
> 
	Even funnier: I always thought that all of this nonsense was
built right into nroff/troff by using the `.rd' request to accept
standard input from the keyboard, a file, or a pipe. You also eliminate
an invocation of [nt]roff for *each* letter you want to send.

	At least if it *doesn't* work, I don't understand how all
of my correspondence has been working!
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"I enjoy working with human beings, and                         John M. Ritter
have stimulating relationships with them."                  Allied-Signal Inc.
                            - HAL 9000                Corporate Tax Department
                      {bellcore,harpo,ihnp4,infopro,princeton,sys1}!motown!jmr
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