addbbox

[grylem]

Hi David.
Can you give me more information about the addbbox utility?
Thanks.

[DavidMorano]

Wow! I had to actually research this to find out where it was and what it might do. I did find its usage in this repository ("research") but I did not find the original utility program itself on my current system. Obviously it was some kind of text processing post-processor for PostScript or EPS language-code. This utility probably dates back to the 1980s (or after the creation of the idea of EPS files). It was a utility supplied (I think) with the old AT&T Documentor's Workbench (DWB) software distribution. I last used this maybe 25+ years ago. My guess is that it was old at that time already. From its name (and my very fuzzy memory now) I am going to guess that the program name ('addbbox') was a sort of abbreviation for "Add Bounding Box." From its usage in the repository (a post-processor for EPS files), my guess is that it added something called a "bounding box" for EPS images (of a sort). My further guess is that the "bounding box" in question converted the EPS image for use in being embedded into other documents, as an embedded image or figure of a sort. I tried to look up on the web both the 'addbbox' program and 'Documentor's Workbench" in general, but did not immediately find it (the 'addbbox' program). A (very) deeper web search might (eventually) turn up something. I might have this utility archived away, but it is not (at all) immediately accessible to me (sadly). My guess also is that I possibly do not have the source code (most likely in the C programming language) available. If you are trying to create some of the EPS files (used as embedded figures in other documents), try running the TROFF pipeline without that 'addbbox' post-processing and then pop the resulting EPS file into something like Adobe Illustrator or anything else that can display Postscript (there are free utilities for this on UNIX boxes, and likely other OSes as well). I am sorry that I could not help with this more, but it has been a very long time now since I created documents like what you see there in the repository. Best regards. Oh, if you even do find that utility on the web somewhere (or the source code for it), please let me know so that I can grab that also. Thanks.

[DavidMorano]

There appears to be a utility named 'ps2epsi' that does what that 'addbbox' utility did. The 'ps2epsi' utility is part of the "GhostScript" open-source package that is available online (wherever). I have never used this utility ('ps2epsi') myself, but it looks to be quite straightforward and an identical (or almost so) substitute for that 'addbbox' utility. All the best.

[grylem]

Thank you very much for the information.

P.S.
Your troff documents are very useful for me as examples.

[DavidMorano]

You are welcome.