Roff

[Rich Kaul]

   Would anyone know how to get a postscript file from the
   unix document formatter, roff?  I need a postscript file so
   that I can get a hardcopy of my documents out on a postscript
   printer.

There are two good choices.  First, you can get Adobe Transcript.  A
site license runs about $3000 and is a far better deal than Sun's
$2000 per machine for a *binary* copy.  It might be worth it if you
want a company to stand behind its product and need someone to blame
when, not if, things go wrong ;-).  If you don't need so much
hand-holding, GNU's groff is a slightly better solution.  It has
things like GNU clones of eqn, pic, tbl, etc., generates PostScript,
DVI, or other formats, and comes with X11 previewers.  Best of all,
it's got the right price (free).  The only gotcha with groff is that
you have to have a C++ compiler, but GNU also has g++, a free C++
compiler that's quite good.  Having both Transcript and groff
installed, I tend to use the GNU product.

Groff is available for anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu and
tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (amoung other places) and anonymous uucp from
osu-cis.

-rich
-- 
Rich Kaul                         | It wouldn't be research if we
kaul at icarus.eng.ohio-state.edu    | knew what we were doing.