Re: [Groff] UTP markup

[Jon Snader]

On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 11:47:44AM -0700, Meg McRoberts wrote:
> I am a professional scribe with time on my hands -- would be
> happy to do some stylistic editing.  I must confess that I
> don't quite know what the UTP is -- I've been lurking here
> hoping that all would become clear...
> 

UTP is _Unix Text Processing_.  This is a classic, out of print
book about using troff and friends.  Recently the authors made
scanned pages of the book available, but they can't find the
original source.  They have graciously agreed to let us transcribe
the book and make it available to the groff community.

A group of us are working on that transcription now.  Basically,
individuals volunteered to take a chapter or two and type it in.
I worked on creating a set of macros to recreate the original style
as much as possible.  These macros are additions to the ms macros.

> Is this documentation available for viewing on the web?  I
> downloaded the groff-current stuff but am having some trouble
> getting it to build.  I've always had tools people who dealt
> with this stuff, I'm afraid.
> 

Many, or perhaps most of us just use the prebuilt binaries that come
with Linux, *BSD, or whatever.  However, some on the list do build
their own binaries to keep up with the latest release.  If you describe
the problems you're having, I'm sure someone can help.

> Reading through the source code, I have spotted a few little
> things that could be improved.  One big item is a statement
> that UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.  AT&T
> Bell Laboratories hasn't existed for some time.  I believe
> the UNIX trademark is owned by X/Open.  Caldera obtained
> ownership of the UNIX sourcecode when it acquired SCO.  Nice
> mess, eh?
> 

Yeah.  We understand all that.  I guess that's another question.  Should
we update things like ``UNIX is a trademark of...'' or just stick to
the original.

> With the caveat that I'm more familiar with mm macros than me,
> I'd be happy to work with anyone on some of this picayune writing
> stuff but I need suggestions for dealing with the mechanics.
> 

Now that you've jumped in, I'm sure that people will have all sorts
of ideas on how you can help.  As I said in the post you quote, one thing
we need is someone to make a final pass over the results so that the
style is consistent among the chapters.

Jon Snader