RE: [Groff] ditroff

[T. Kurt Bond]

Bernd Warken writes:
> xditview(1) speaks about a ditroff program.  What is it? Should there
> be a ditroff link/script in groff?

The ditroff program is the conversion of the original troff (which
only worked with one particular typesetter) to a version that would
work with multiple typesetters/printers.  This is described in the paper:

* CSTR #97, B. W. Kernighan, A Typesetter-Independent TROFF, Bell
  Labs, 1981, revised March 1982

which is available from 

    http://plan9.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr/97.ps.gz

The ditroff program is still the basis for the Plan 9 troff, as far as
I know, and is probably the troff supplied with most commercial
versions of Unix.

(I'm suspicious than in many places ditroff's filename is actually
simply "troff".)

The groff equivalent used to be installed as gtroff and now days is
installed as troff, I think.
-- 
T. Kurt Bond, address@hidden