Re: [Groff] Bugs in grohtml

[Peter Schaffter]

On Wed, May 28, 2003, James J. Ramsey wrote:
> Trying to get HTML output from -mom formatted
> documents smoked out another bug in grohtml.

Omigod.  You actually tried to get html output from mom?  Some
folks are suckers for punishment. :)

Seriously, there's a reason why the man page for groff_mom reads:

    "...designed primarily to format documents for PostScript output."

While it's somewhat contrary to the general direction of groff, I
designed mom specifically for typesetting and document processing
to the printed page.  I'm sure some people would love that
great output could be had with "groff -mom -Tdvi" or "groff -mom
-Thtml", but it just ain't so.  Mom's for -Tps.


> /path/to/tmac/om.tmac:109: warning: macro `END' not
> defined (probably missing space after `EN')
> 
> This seems to be the product of the style of macro
> defs in om.tmac. .MAC is an alias for .de, and macros
> are typically defined as
> 
> .MAC FOO END
> .\" Do stuff
> .END
> 
> grohtml doesn't seem to understand that .de can have a
> second argument, or what it's for.

Actually, it's great that you found this.  Anyone inspecting
om.tmac will see that it makes heavy use of a lot of contemporary
groff features that (mostly) aren't part of older macro sets.  One
of my reasons for doing this was to put those features through
their paces and smoke out bugs.

-- 
Peter Schaffter

Author of _The Schumann Proof_, appearing fall, 2004
(pub. RendezVous Press, Canada)