Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ibmarc!ibmarc.uucp!kurt
From: kurt@ibmarc.uucp (Kurt Shoens)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.bugs
Subject: Minor problems with THACK package
Message-ID: <880@ks.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jun 89 15:08:10 GMT
Sender: news@ibmarc.UUCP
Reply-To: kurt@ibmarc.uucp (Kurt Shoens)
Organization: IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose
Lines: 24


    I plucked the thack program from comp.sources.misc.  Thack converts
old style troff C\A\T output into PostScript.  The program compiles
cleanly on IBM's AIX system and runs pretty well.  The one problem that
I'm having with thack is that header lines disappear.  For example,
when formatting the manual section thack.1 included in the thack
package, I supply the troff flag -rM1 to suppress the cut marks that
the manual macros like to put at the top of each page.  When I specify
-rM1, the top line of each page is not printed (this is the line that
indicates the command name and page number).  If I do *not* use -rM1,
the cutmarks are produced and no lines are lost.  However, without
-rM1, the text does not fit on a single 8.5 by 11 inch page, so the
text position creeps down on successive pages.
    I experienced the same behavior with the macros supplied with the
netnews 2.11 documentation (which prints no cut marks by default,
hooray!).  Both the manual sections and netnews documents format
correctly using ordinary nroff.
    The printer that I'm generating output for is an IBM 4216 (300 dpi
PostScript).
    Another minor problem:  the PostScript output does not begin with
the PostScript comment symbols %!.  As a result, my printer software
thinks ordinary text is being printed.

Kurt Shoens, IBM Almaden Research Center, ...!uunet!ibmarc!kurt