RE: [Groff] Help with umlauts

[Ted Harding]

On 31-May-00 Bates, Rod wrote:
> I have an old input file and its corresponding .ps file, both of
> which came to me from long ago and far away.

Dunno about " long ago" but I reckon "far away" is relevant!

> I can get groff 
> to regenerate the .ps, except it complains about a few occurrences
> of umlauted characters.  For example, in the input file, there
> is a \*U which shows as capital U with umlaut in the original
> .ps file.  Using groff, I get the message: 
> 
> warning: can't find special character `U:' 
> 
> on this line, and the output .ps file just has the umlauted U
> omitted altogether.  
> 
> The input file has a comment:
> 
> .\" use: pic | tbl | eqn | ditroff -me
> 
> I am using: 
> 
> groff -pte -me
> 
> What do I need to do to get these characters? 

Clearly someone has defined a troff string \*U to mean U-umlaut.
This may have been done in the 'tmac.e' on the system they were
using.

The warning "can't find special character `U:'" means that
there is an instance of \(U:, probably in \*U.

There is already a mechanism for this sort of thing in the
tmac.s ('ms') macros, which is set up if the macro '.AM'
("improved accent marks") is invoked. Then the dieresis
accent-over (umlaut) is defined as '\*:', and a U-dieresis
can be defined by '.char \(U: U\*:'

Since the input file itself presumably needs the 'tmac.e' macros,
if you want to reproduce this you'll have to do it by hand,
along the following lines, since there seems to be nothing
like it in groff tmac.e:

  .de acc*over-def
  .ds \\$1 \Z'\v'(u;\w'x'*0+\En[rst]-\En[.cht])'\
  \h'(u;-\En[skw]+(-\En[.w]-\w'\\$2'/2)+\En[.csk])'\\$2'
  ..

  .acc*over-def : \(ad

  .char \(U: U\*:

and then \(U: will do the job, as in \(U:berblick.

Presumably the file's creator wanted to simplfy typing by defining

  .ds U \(U:

so that \*U is equivalent to \(U:, and so on.

For more details, and for other accents (acute, grave, circumflex,
cedilla, etc) have a look right at the end of the tmac.s file
(under the '.AM' macro).

I hope this helps.
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
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Date: 31-May-00                                       Time: 19:42:06
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