Re: [Groff] moving TOC to start

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I'm not sure that you've fully understood my proposal;

I think I have :-)

> this is exactly how pdfroff currently works, and I don't foresee any
> change in this strategy, in respect of resolving references or index
> entries.

Excellent.

> After generating the reference dictionary, pdfroff then performs two
> further passes, one to capture the table of contents into its own
> PostScript file, the second to capture the document body text.

Uh, oh, I wasn't aware that you use this indeed very nasty strategy
within pdfroff.  As Tadziu suggested in another mail, groff should
behave like LaTeX (and I was incorrectly assuming that the ms macros
already do something similar), this is, writing out the table of
contents piece by piece into a separate file so that the created
auxiliary file can be read in by a second pass at any location.  This
not only fixes the nasty collation problem, it also fixes possible
page numbering issues -- it even allows that the table of contents
ends on the same page as the main body starts (this may be useful for
mini TOCs which are located at the beginning of each chapter, listing
the sections and subsections to come).


    Werner