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From: mash@winchester.UUCP (John Mashey)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.text
Subject: Re: Speedup idea for troff/nroff
Message-ID: <94@winchester.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Jan-87 00:26:22 EST
Article-I.D.: winchest.94
Posted: Wed Jan  7 00:26:22 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Jan-87 19:05:44 EST
References: <387@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Reply-To: mash@winchester.UUCP (John Mashey)
Distribution: comp
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 19
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:530 comp.text:158

In article <387@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk> lmjm@doc.ic.ac.uk (Lee McLoughlin) writes:
>This is a speedup idea for troff and its relatives .....
>
>Most of the local use of troff is with a few standard packages (man,
>ms, me).  Would it be possible to use the unexec routine to create a
>preloaded version by running troff to read in the macro package
>then unexecing itself out?  (Unexec is a routine which creates an
>a.out equivalent to the current running program.)  ...

the nroff/troff of System V have done this for many years: one command
lets you create a file that has all of the necessary state information,
normally after the unchanging part of the macro package has been processed.
Then, invoking {n|t}roff -cx gets the "compressed" form of the macro package.
I think Fred Dalrymple did this [but somebody correct me if I'm wrong, it's been
a long time.]
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: 
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