Xref: utzoo comp.windows.x:2086 comp.sources.wanted:2709 comp.unix.questions:4765
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!vixie!paul
From: paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.sources.wanted,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: : Xroff
Message-ID: <740@vixie.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 87 05:46:57 GMT
References: <6224@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq)
Organization: Vixie Enterprises, San Francisco
Lines: 46
Keywords: troff preview etc...
Summary: xroff has nothing to do with Xwindows

In article <6224@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> shipley@web1d.berkeley.edu () writes:
>Can anybody send me a review on the product "xroff"
>I was told that this a version of troff that you can preview
>using a X display.

Xroff is a version of ditroff as ported to lots of oddball OS's (BSD, MSDOS,
VMS, etc) by Image Network in Palo Alto or Mountain View or some such.  It
can be purchased with support for HP-lj[+/II/500] or PostScript(tm) or
Xerox 4045 (hence Xroff's name, I believe).  You pay more if you plan to 
use more fonts, CPUs, users, printers, different kinds of printers, etc.

>Is this product any good? (ie: worth buying?)

I'd look at EROFF (sorry, don't know who makes it or where they are) before
commiting to XROFF.  XROFF has a few oddball problems at one of my clients
that I have never been able to resolve.. I was astonished to learn one day
while loaning my CPU to an Image Networks engineer for a recompile of his
latest version that the binaries they ship to customers are compiled without
optimization... The programmers at Image Network don't trust optimizers, but
I managed to get him to leave me an extra set of binaries -- optimized --
because I hate the idea of wasting all those CPU cycles on the stuff PCC
puts out without C2.

However, since XROFF is not a previewer, you probably don't care how good
or bad it is at what it actually IS..

>Does it do what it claims ( or what I think it does )

Nope.

I'd try a dvi-to-tektronix (or "old troff" to tektronix) or some other hacked
up way to preview things using odd modes of Xterm.  There is an X application
called Xdvi which will preview the DVI output by Tex, but this is a very
different kind of DVI from that output by ditroff (and xroff).  Same names,
but very different beasts.

>Any comment will be appreciated.

The other thing to try is some version of TROFF which can speak PostScript(tm)
which you can then feed through one of the several Xps programs floating
around -- these are PostScript(tm) interpreter/previewers for Xwindows.

>Pete Shipley: 

Paul Vixie
paul%vixie@uunet.uu.net