<div dir="auto">Branden. Thank you. FWIW I have generally found heirloom to be good enough for rendering most old troff on modern systems such that I can reasonably read the text. But I suspect your detail is useful to know in some cases. As they say YMMR. That said I often use the groff tools kits since it’s what comes with things like brew on my Mac but it burps on certain macros, particularly when I want to render old man pages or doc files from old Unix versions with things like .UX macro (which is a PITA).</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Thanks again,</div><div dir="auto">Clem<br clear="all"><br clear="all"><div dir="auto"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual</div></div></div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 8:14 PM G. Branden Robinson <<a href="mailto:g.branden.robinson@gmail.com">g.branden.robinson@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi Doug,<br>
<br>
At 2024-10-04T21:42:50+0000, Jacobson, Doug W [E CPE] via TUHS wrote:<br>
> Folks:<br>
> <br>
> Long story short, I have a unpublished manuscript that a faculty<br>
> member in my department wrote late 1980's early 2000's. He did the<br>
> entire thing in troff, eqn, and pic. The faculty member is still<br>
> alive. A publisher is interested in the manuscript. I have all of<br>
> the source files on an old unix machine that still has troff, eqn and<br>
> pic. It also has groff. This issue is that the pic commands are<br>
> bracketed by .G1 and .G2 not .PS & .PE.<br>
<br>
As others noted, those are the characteristic preprocessor tokens used<br>
by grap(1).<br>
<br>
groff(1) says:<br>
A free implementation of the grap preprocessor, written by Ted<br>
Faber ⟨<a href="mailto:faber@lunabase.org" target="_blank">faber@lunabase.org</a>⟩, can be found at the grap website<br>
⟨<a href="http://www.lunabase.org/~faber/Vault/software/grap/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.lunabase.org/~faber/Vault/software/grap/</a>⟩. groff<br>
supports only this grap.<br>
<br>
Distributors often have a package of Faber's grap. I'm not aware of any<br>
other in circulation. (Happy to be corrected here.)<br>
<br>
Please contact the groff list, groff at gnu dot org, if you have any<br>
problems using it to format these documents and/or to note formatting<br>
discrepancies between Unix troff and groff. There will likely be some.<br>
<br>
I've noted differences between DWB troff and Heirloom troff, so using<br>
the latter does not guarantee identical rendering, and moreover<br>
DWB/System V troff has some bugs/limitations that Heirloom and/or GNU<br>
troffs have fixed, and some of these can affect formatting.<br>
<br>
Here's a list from groff's tbl(1) man page, for example.<br>
<br>
GNU tbl enhancements<br>
In addition to extensions noted above, GNU tbl removes constraints<br>
endured by users of AT&T tbl.<br>
<br>
• Region options can be specified in any lettercase.<br>
<br>
• There is no limit on the number of columns in a table,<br>
regardless of their classification, nor any limit on the number<br>
of text blocks.<br>
<br>
• All table rows are considered when deciding column widths, not<br>
just those occurring in the first 200 input lines of a region.<br>
Similarly, table continuation (.T&) tokens are recognized<br>
outside a region’s first 200 input lines.<br>
<br>
• Numeric and alphabetic entries may appear in the same column.<br>
<br>
• Numeric and alphabetic entries may span horizontally.<br>
<br>
One can imagine how a 200+-row table could format differently between<br>
DWB/System V and GNU tbl, without either being "wrong".<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Branden<br>
</blockquote></div></div>