From:	softbrek AT POOL DOT Informatik DOT RWTH-Aachen DOT DE
Subject:	Re: FLEX documentation and TeX.
To:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu (djgpp)
Date:	Tue, 20 Dec 1994 14:39:07 +0100 (MET)

Hello James, and everyone else out there as well

James asked:

> I have noticed that the Flex documentation is in this weird format which I
> can't read.  Does anyone have any programs which they could point me to
> (MS-DOS programs) which convert the files to ordinary text files??
> 
> Also, I want to print out the docs for DJGPP, but I apparently need TeX to
> convert the .tex files to printable info.  Could I please be told where I
> can get TeX from??  I don't need the full distribution, I just need the
> stuff to make printable files.
> 
> Ciao,
> 

Someone on the list already answered the TeX part, so I only
need to tell you about the way to read flex documentation,
I think. So here it goes (sorry for the lengthy explanation,
but I presume the poster of the question, and at least some
of this answer's readers to know next to nothing about U*IX):

(BTW, this explanation is usefull for all those files with names like
foo.1 or foo.nroff or the like which you may see in source-packages
distributed for use under U*IX, not just those for flex.)  

The weird format he's talking about is the (good?) old troff format,
in common use (corrections?) nowadays only for manual pages, the U*IX
taste of paper as well as online documentation.  The troff format is a
bit like TeX, and therfore you need a kind of compiler to produce the
final versions of these files. The final version can either be made
for output on screen (ascii, with overtyping used to indicate bold and
underlined letters), or printers. You'll most probably want the
version to be read on screen. To get this screen-readable version, you
can choose one of these methods:

* (Go the really hard way :) Get, compile, and install groff from your
nearest FSF mirror site. This will take time, space, and frustration
before you get ready, but it is said to be possible to do. (And you'll
gain quite a bit of experience, as well :-) You probably should tell
the list about your results, if you do this.

* (Take it easy :) Get and install cawf, a DOS program that gets done
quite a bit of what needs to be done, and normally produces usable
output (I use it all the time, only occasionally reverting to use
linux's implementation of groff to handle more difficult cases.)

* (Let others work for you:) Ask someone with a linux-box, or any
other normal UN*X machine, to "nroff" them for you. (He/She'll know
what this is, I presume:-)

And, no matter which of the above you chose, get less177e.zip from
SIMTEL (subdirectory textutil). This is a substitute for 'more', the
DOS-standard command to view multipage-documents (well, once you've
seen it, you will laugh at 'more', I think, for 'less' comes as close
to V. Buerg's world-famous 'list.com' as a unix-program can get, I
think), and it knows how to handle the overtyping way to display
underlined or bold characters by overtyping (it uses colors on the
screen, instead).

Any more questions? Mail me (or the list).

Merry Christmas to all of you, from good cold Germany

Hans-Bernhard Broeker
(	softbrek AT pool DOT informatik DOT rwth-aachen DOT de )
( or	Broeker AT axpmgr DOT physik DOT rwth-aachen DOT de	)

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