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From: tim@ora.UUCP (Tim O'Reilly)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.text
Subject: Re: Troff - "Typesetter busy" message
Message-ID: <643@ora.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 19:20:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: ora.643
Posted: Tue Jul 28 19:20:15 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Jul-87 04:08:42 EDT
References: <585@ritcv.UUCP>
Organization: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Newton, MA
Lines: 34
Summary: use the -t option
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.questions:3390 comp.text:1001

In article <585@ritcv.UUCP>, hxd9622@ritcv.UUCP (Herman Darmawan) writes:
> I ran troff but interrupted it halfway.  After that, troff reports
> "Typesetter busy" message.  There is nobody else on the system.  No
> processes are using troff either. I looked for any possible lock file
> that troff may maintain but no luck.  I have even powered down the
> system and brought it back up and it still reports the same thing.

Old troff expects to talk directly to a typesetter.  Unlike most
well-behaved UNIX programs, it does not write to standard
output unless you tell it to.  You must use the -t option to
send output to standard out (which means you must also have
a postprocessor to interpret the output for the typesetter
or laser printer you want to send it to).  If you don't use
-t, you'll get this "Typesetter Busy" message.  This (almost
certainly) has nothing to do with the fact that you
interrupted troff part way through.

The standard usage these days, since most people don't have
CAT typesetters directly connected to their systems, is:

   troff -t -mx -Tsomedevice | postprocessor | lp -dsomedevice

If you need more general background on troff, it's covered
pretty thoroughly in a number of commercially available
books.  I'm biased (since I helped write it), but I think
the best is UNIX Text Processing by Dale Dougherty and Tim
O'Reilly, published by Howard Sams.  It's available in most
technical bookstores ($26.95).  In addition, we sell it by mail
order (call 1-800-338-NUTS).
-- 
Tim O'Reilly (617) 527-4210
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks
981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164
UUCP:	seismo!uunet!ora!tim      ARPA:   tim@ora.uu.net