Xref: utzoo comp.windows.x:2137 comp.sources.wanted:2803 comp.unix.questions:4844
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!vixie!paul
From: paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.sources.wanted,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: : Xroff
Message-ID: <755@vixie.UUCP>
Date: 20 Dec 87 06:13:03 GMT
References: <6224@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <740@vixie.UUCP> <3923fc62.b263@hi-csc.UUCP>
Reply-To: paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq)
Organization: Vixie Enterprises, San Francisco
Lines: 42
Keywords: troff preview etc...

In article <3923fc62.b263@hi-csc.UUCP> giebelhaus@hi-csc.UUCP (Timothy R. Giebelhaus) writes:
>In article <740@vixie.UUCP> paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) writes:
>>Xroff is a version of ditroff as ported to lots of oddball OS's (BSD, MSDOS,
>Actually it also works for most cpus including the ones that are not oddball

True.  Sorry to suggest that it ONLY worked on oddballs.  However, some systems
(UNIX, really) are more likely targets for TROFF than others (VMS, MSDOS), and
XROFF was the first thing I'd ever heard of that brought TROFF to the oddballs
in my life.

>>You pay more if you plan to 
>>use more fonts, CPUs, users, printers, different kinds of printers, etc.
>The pricing is based on the number of users and the size of
>the printer.  Extra fonts and more than one cpu does cost extra.

And more that one printer costs extra, and I believe that the charge for
2 type A printers is less than the price for 1 type A and 1 type B.  I
thought this was a little bit ridiculous when I saw it in the contract,
but then it was client money, not mine, and it predated me at the site.

>>XROFF has a few oddball problems at one of my clients
>>that I have never been able to resolve.
>Could you please let me know what these problems are?  I have xroff and
>I have not noticed any problems.

Sure.  'tbl' makes horiz and vert lines; if working at some specific point
sizes (but not others), the vert lines come out about 2 inches low on our
X4045.  I sent the X4045 data stream to ImageNet, and it printed without
error on their local X4045.  Their ROM's were older than mine.  Six months
ago, that's as far as the problem resolution went.  Nothing since then.  I
just tell my users to use a different point size..

Also, extremely large files tend to make the XROFF postprocessor loop
forever, producing no output, consuming vast amounts of CPU time.

XROFF is better than nothing, don't get me wrong.  However, I suggest that
people looking for a DWB port to their hardware look at alternatives before
selecting XROFF -- all DWB ports are not created equal.

--
Paul Vixie
paul%vixie@uunet.uu.net