Subject: [Tools-discuss] Where to get Nroff editor for MAC

From: "Mankamana Mishra (mankamis)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 23:30:36 +0000

Hi Team,
I was trying to get nroff editor, and google points me to software which is not allowed to execute in MAC. Is there any way to get this software ?

Thanks
Mankamana

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From: Glen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 18:01:22 -0700

> I was trying to get nroff editor, and google points me to software which is not allowed to execute in MAC. Is there any way to get this software ?

Hi Mankamana -

Others doubtless have more knowledge here, but since it's the
weekend/nighttime for most of the planet, I'll take a stab:

You say "nroff editor".  By iteself, nroff is not an editor.  It's a
converter, that changes its own particular brand of text markup into a
formatted output file.  The original nroff has been ported many times,
and is now a part of GNU groff, available pretty much everywhere,
including here:  https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/  There are only
binaries for Windows; that is because Macs are really Unix-based, and
so the expectation is that you would build groff from source on your
Mac, just as most Unix users would.

Of course, these days, groff is included stock with pretty much every
other Unix distribution in the world.  There is apparently a version
of groff included with MacOS; however, anecdotal commentary seems to
indicate it's rather outdated.  Apparently you can easily install a
much more recent version using the "Homebrew" system.  See
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/335812/install-pdfroff-on-macos
for details about that.  Or you could build a new complete version
from source by installing the free XCode toolkit from the App store.
Homebrew seems much the better choice.

But to just "edit" nroff-style files, you don't need nroff.  You can
use any text editor you like.  TextEdit, Emacs, VI, any text based
editor of your choice should do the job.  You would only need nroff to
convert the files into printable form at the end of your process.

Searching further, I was surprised also to see an actual "NROFF ID
Editor" here:  http://aaa-sec.com/nroffedit/nroffedit/download.html  .
I wasn't aware of it, but it seems to be targeted at IETF IDs.
Perhaps you meant that?  There is a Mac download halfway down that
page.  Disclaimer:  I have no idea what that particular tool is, or if
it's even legitimate, I see only a web page that looks interesting,
and include it for your reference.

As I said, others will chime in with corrections, but I hope this is
enough to get you started.

Glen
--
Glen Barney
Vintage Unix Junkie, and
IT Director
AMS (IETF Secretariat)

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From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2018 02:47:23 +0000

Also, if you're interested in doing IETF documents like Internet-Drafts and RFCs, the days of nroff have (finally) passed.  Write in XML or markdown and use the various free tools.  If that's what you're looking to do.

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From: Glen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 20:08:37 -0700

On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 7:48 PM Salz, Rich <[email-masked]> wrote:
> the days of nroff have (finally) passed.

My heart died when uucp faded away.  Ahh, the good old days!  How
things have changed since then!

Glen

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From: "Mankamana Mishra (mankamis)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2018 04:01:22 +0000

Thanks . I was thinking other way round that Nroff is something new 🙂. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 28, 2018, at 19:48, Salz, Rich <[email-masked]> wrote:
>