Follow-up Comment #12, bug #60602 (project groff): Hi John,
I had this sitting in a browser text box for days, so I'm just going ahead and pushing it out to record the state of things. [comment #4 comment #4:] > > because I have nothing that can interpret the Graphic Systems C/A/T command stream the former produces. > > I do <https://github.com/Alhadis/Roff.js/blob/9f4c65cd8efe081bd3888e19817b25889f9b2bb5/bin/cat2dit>: > > > $ cat2dit -Tps < output.cat | grops > $ cat2dit -Tpost < output.cat | dpost > > # Unscaled translation of C/A/T output > $ cat2dit < output.cat > > > Based on https://github.com/Alhadis/otroff/tree/cat-driver > > https://github.com/Alhadis/otroff/tree/cat-driver Unfortunately, I hit more roadblocks...this GitHub project seems not to have been updated in a while (December 2019, IIRC), and Node itself has moved on. So my Debian buster-based system is too old for your code, and the macOS system I sometimes have access to is too _new_ for it. I don't have the error messages handy but I can collect them if that would be helpful. They're dependency issues, probably exactly the sort of thing you'd expect. I will say that I think a C version of cat2dit would be a very nice thing to have. Maybe if I need a project to distract me after groff 1.23 is released...or maybe some enthusiastic volunteer will show up. In fact, a C version of cat2dit that would run on V7 Unix under SIMH would, in my imagination, kick ass. (People really wanted one, back in the '80s.) Then there would be no data migration issue or octal dumping to mess with. Run SIMH in a terminal window with enough scrollback and you could just copy and paste the entire ditroff output to wherever you wanted. A tool like this is necessary if we are to hew to Ralph's rather stentorian declaration that groff must copy "historic" behavior, at least if that history is to encompass aspects of V7 troff behavior that its nroff output cannot reveal and which CSTR #54 doesn't clearly specify. My own view is that it's worthwhile to have V7 troff's behavior exposed for analysis as easily as possible, but that groff should feel free to deviate from that behavior where cost/benefit considerations point that direction. Plenty of "Implementation Differences" are already documented in our Texinfo manual and groff_diff(7) page; some of them I have added myself in the course of studying groff and its cousins over the past few years. Anyway, the good news is that I have resolved my questions to my satisfaction, have a demo, and I'll post my findings to the list. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?60602> _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/