Xref: utzoo comp.sources.wanted:7444 comp.lang.postscript:2201
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!reading!cf-cm!csisles!everson
From: everson@CompSci.Bristol.AC.UK (Phill Everson )
Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted,comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Looking for troff to postscript(LaserWriter II) converter
Message-ID: <832@csisles.Bristol.AC.UK>
Date: 16 May 89 11:43:32 GMT
References: <10654@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK.
Lines: 29

From article <10654@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>, by toddpw@tybalt.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel):
> 
> There is a "phantom" program on a few of the Unix systems here which does
> exactly what you want i.e. convert troff CAT output directly into postscript.
> 

There is also a program called thack which does exactly what is wanted, ie:

		troff -t -man manualpage.1 | thack | pspr

thack converts CAT control codes into postscript. It was written by a
colleague of mine Gareth Waddell and is in the Public Domain. I could send
out a copy or post it to comp.sources.misc if anyone wants.

It works pretty well - I've used it for 18 months to print out troff-ed
versions of manual pages, the mmdf documents, some fairly extensive
homegrown documents etc etc. It has some problems with tables, but does
fairly well, considering. The postscript output looks better when thack
is run under SunOS 4.0 or later as Sun changed the font width tables
for troff to match those for postscript then. It's still perfectly
readable under 3.5 tho'. It's also been run on a 3B2 without any
problems.

There is also a version for Device Independent Troff as well.

Let me know if anyone is interested in me posting this.

Phill Everson
University of Bristol, UK