Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!xanth!ukma!rutgers!att!ulysses!andante!alice!debra
From: debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: nroff/troff to TeX/LaTex translator
Keywords: troff nroff TeX LaTex
Message-ID: <8738@alice.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 89 20:28:38 GMT
References: <8248@dasys1.UUCP>
Reply-To: debra@alice.UUCP ()
Organization: AT&T, Bell Labs
Lines: 37

In article <8248@dasys1.UUCP> intern@dasys1.UUCP (intern ) writes:
>Is there a troff/nroff to TeX/LaTeX translator? I have a few *roff
>documents that I would like to convert to LaTeX, but doing this manually
>proved to be a monumental task.
>	Thanks,

I don't think this exists. Translating a small part of troff may be
feasible, but troff has many very odd commands (often used in common
macro packages!) that are very hard or impossible to translate.

A few examples:
.cs uses constant character spacing for possibly non-constant-width fonts.
.wh sets a trap at a given vertical position on the page, so whenever the
    output reaches that point some macro is called. This is impossible in
    Tex, as the vertical position of output text is unknown until Tex
    decides where to break a page and how much to stretch or shrink the
    text vertically.
.tr replace some characters by others on OUTPUT. so different widths are
    used when calculating linebreaks.
hp  register containing the horizontal place on INPUT line.
nl  vertical positions of last printed text base-line. again impossible in
    Tex as vertical positions are unknow while composing a page.
.k  horizontal size of the text portion of the current, partially-collected
    OUTPUT line. This is again an alian concept in Tex, because paragraphs
    are not build the same way as in troff. (I believe this .k register
    silently stopt producing any useful information in ditroff, so the
    old troff and ditroff are NOT 100% compatible, in spite of various
    claims)

I honestly believe that a troff output to dvi converter would be easier
if all you want is to print your old documents.

Paul.
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