Do you know how to use the Acme editor? You use abaco in a similar
fashion.
If you mean a full office suite like Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint
with a GUI interface, then no. But troff is easy to learn. Here's a
rough tutorial for troff: troff documents are text files sent through
the troff program and its preprocessors to get a document. For
example, if you have a file named mydoc, the command
troff mydoc | page
lets you preview your document, and
troff mydoc | lp -dmyprinter
sends it to your printer, replacing myprinter with the device name,
troff is commonly used with a macro set, which defines formatting.
The most common macro set is ms, created by Mike Lesk. To format a
document with ms support:
troff -ms mydoc | [output command]
Here is the structure of an ms document:
.TL
Title
.AU
Author
.AB
Abstract
.AE
.NH
Numbered heading
.PP
Paragraph
.IP \(bu
Bulleted paragraph
.IP 1.
Numbered paragraph
.IP 2.
List item number 2
.LP
Left-aligned paragraph
.SH
Section heading
.NH 2
Level 2 numbered heading (1.1)
.PP
Text in
.B bold
and
.I italic .
Lines beginning with a . are troff/ms commands. If your document has
no abstract, use
.AB no
.AE
A preprocessor is filtered through before troff. For example, a
document with tables, equations, and pictures uses the command line
pic mydoc | tbl | eqn | troff -ms | [output program]
tbl, also by Mike Lesk, creates tables.
.TS
center, box;
c s
r l.
Title of table
_
A B
C D
E F
.TE
The line
center, box;
is obvious - it affects the whole table.
c s
tells the first row to be centered and all columns spanned, and
r l.
tells the rest of the rows to have a right-adjusted column and a left-
adjusted column. Column data is separated by tabs. If a line is
_
then a horizontal line is placed.
eqn formats equations.
.EQ
sum from n=1 to infinity { x sup 2 } ~ -> ~ { infinity sub n sup 2 }
over 4n
.EN
The ~ gives an explicit space, and { } perform grouping. Embedded
equations are also supported:
.EQ
delim @@
.EN
.PP
... the conversion factor from radians to degrees is @180 / pi@
pic is a simple picture language.
.PS
box "hello"
arrow
box "how" "are you?"
box wid 2 "widths are" "in inches"
arrow <->
ellipse
.PE
pic and eqn are by Brian Kernighan, and eqn was co-written by Lorinda
Cherry. The official documentation for many of these tools can be
found at:
- http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr.html
- http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/papers.html
And again, see troff.org for more information:
abaco http://www.troff.org/
To download a paper from the above,
1) Snarf the link. Snarf is to Plan 9 as copy is to Windows/Mac OS X/
Linux.
2) In a command line, type "hget " without hitting Enter.
3) Middle-click and choose "paste".
4) If the file is .ps.gz, type "| gunzip > x.ps" replacing x with the
document's intended name. Otherwise, just say "> x.ps" or "> x.pdf".
5) Run page on the ps/pdf file.
On Jan 31, 2008, at 7:22 PM, Michael Andronov wrote:
Hi,
I'm a new to Plan9, and I am trying to understand the current
status of the system.
In particular, I am wondering about the list of application available=
- is there email reader?
- Web browser?
- office like suite = document editor, spreadsheet?
- is it possible to run Linux software under plan9?
In other words, I am wondering if it is possible to switch to Plan
9 system, and to use it as 'everyday machine'?
Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.
have a great day,
Michael.
