RE: [Groff] .cf and .trf

[Ted Harding]

On 30-Aug-01 Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab wrote:
> 
> Gtroff manual says
> 
>        .trf filename
>               Transparently output the contents of file filename.
>               Each line is output as it would be were it preceded
>               by  \!; however, the lines are not subject to copy-
>               mode interpretation.
> 
> How do I create the file <filename>? I mean what goes in it? A
> diversion or what?

The intention here is that "filename" denotes any file in the system
filespace (clearly it's desirable that it should be a plain text
file!), which may have been created by any method which can create
such files. It should be used when you need the text in filename
to be used literally (the example in "man troff" of ".di x//.trf f//.di"
to define a macro whose lines are identical to those in file "f" is a
case in point; otherwise, ".so" is usually what you want for importing
the contents of filename).

You can write from groff into an external file using the
.open, .opena, .write and .close requests (I sometimes use these
in order to run 'pic', 'tbl' or 'eqn' as "inline" processors
rather than _pre_-processors, in cases where what is to be processed
by these depends on results already obtained during the gtroff run:
you write out the lines you want, close the file, use the ".sy"
request to run say 'tbl' on the external file redirecting output to
another file, then use ".so" to import this output).

Ted.

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Date: 30-Aug-01                                       Time: 13:17:06
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