> On Nov 7, 2008, at 11:09 AM, Dan Cross wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 3:03 AM, Bruce Ellis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> wrote: >>> I'd like to see a you tube video of the troff. >> >> Dude, don't tempt me. When (if?) I (ever?) get off of active duty, I >> might do a youtube video on troff. I know that's not quite what you >> were saying, but it'd be hilarious. >> >> - Dan C. >> >> (ps- Bruce, let me know when you'll be stateside again.) >> > > If I made it, it wouldn't be on youtube (I don't want to give up my > rights to the video). But I would definitely give it to you, the groff > guys, and the Heirloom guys. > > How is this to start: > > "This video will teach you troff. What is troff? troff is a document > preparation system, much like TeX or Microsoft Word. troff is one of > the first of these systems to support fonts in italic and drawing on > the page. It was developed by the late Joe Ossanna and is the latest > and newest in a long line of document programs. > troff is most like TeX in that the document is a text file containing > words with formatting commands mixed in. This means you'll have to get > used to the command line. > Three primary versions of troff are used today. The official version, > based of Ossanna's work, is in the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating > system. The most common one is groff, a version made for the GNU > project. There is also Heirloom troff, based off the ones by > OpenSolaris. All three are free software. > So as you can see, troff is a Unix tool. But if you are on Windows, > don't despair: there are ports of these tools to Windows. I will be > running Plan 9 for my demo. > > Let's start by creating a simple document. Create a new text file: > > > first_troff > > and edit it: > > acme first_troff > > Now let's type a few words: > > hello, world > > Save your work. In my case, I middle-click the Put at the top. > Now comes the fun part. In Plan 9, to preview the document, you say > > troff first_troff | proof > > or > > troff first_troff | page > > I will use page. With GNU, you convert to a PostScript file and open > it with an image viewer: > > troff first_troff | grops > first_troff.ps > > (Heirloom goes here.)"
A video seems like a rather foolish place to try and explain troff, since the whole process is a lot of text input and a couple commands. There exist plenty of documents on writing troff AND they avoid the cutesy "Ok now let's do this... here's what I did... Now the fun part" form. John
