May 1987
Intermediate to advanced
680 pages
17h 3m
English
Content preview from UNIX° TEXT PROCESSING
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Drawing Pictures
If you are one of those who can’t draw a straight line, let alone a decent picture or graph, you probably replace pictures with verbal descriptions. Perhaps you know what it is like to describe a drawing to a person who knows how to draw. The pic preprocessor requires you to follow the process of using “words” to describe something pictorial.
The pic preprocessor has a dual purpose. The first is to provide a “natural language” method of describing simple pictures and graphs in your documents. The second is to offer a “programming language” for generating pictures and graphs with minimal user input. Learning pic is an iterative process: describe what you want and then look at what you get. We have included many examples that show both the description and the resulting picture or graph. Take the time to create variations of these descriptions, making modifications and improvements.
The pic preprocessor was designed to produce output on a typesetter, which makes pic expensive and difficult to learn. Fortunately, some graphics terminals and most laser printers can be set up to display or print pic drawings. Access to one or the other is essential if you are going to get enough practice to know how pic responds.
As a preprocessor, pic is a program that processes a specific portion of an input file before the whole document goes to the troff formatter. (The nroff formatter ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.