No! I don't want a video tute on troff. Just a video of you typing in
the troff. It would certainly be better to look at then your idea of
how plan9 works.

brucee

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 11:17 PM, wrote:
>> On Nov 7, 2008, at 11:09 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 3:03 AM, Bruce Ellis
>>> 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
>
>
>