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[previous article] [next article]The Engineering Computer Network will begin shortly to prepare an enhanced version of the Documentor's Workbench (DWB) text processing tools. The familiar troff, nroff, eqn, tbl and pic text tools were installed on the ECN systems as the standard text processing tools during this past summer. Now, AT&T and researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have released enhancements to DWB.
The DWB 2.0 package includes several noteworthy features: A new preprocessor for charts and graphs called ``grap''. A rewritten version of ``eqn'' which is said to be faster and more robust. A series of text processing tools aimed at SUN Workstation users, including a troff previewer and a powerful drawing tool called ``gremlin''.
The ``grap'' preprocessor allows users to quickly build a wide variety of line, bar and scatter charts. A paper describing ``grap'' was printed in the August, 1986 issue of Communications of the ACM, page 782. ``Grap'' and ``pic'' are also discussed in the Programming Pearls column in the same issue of Communications.
We expect to have a test version of these upgraded text tools available in the late spring, with a complete installation currently scheduled for this summer.
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