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Re: [Groff] conditional logic based on device?


From: Michael(tm) Smith
Subject: Re: [Groff] conditional logic based on device?
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:15:23 +0900
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.14r5351+poontang (2008-01-29 21:06:38+09:00)

Clarke Echols <address@hidden>, 2008-02-21 07:04 -0700:

>  Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
> > OK, I did now read the following in the that node:
> >   [...] `gtroff' provides two built-in conditions `n'
> >   and `t' for the `if', `ie', and `while' requests to decide
> >   whether `gtroff' shall behave like `nroff' or like `troff'."
> 
>  I was not aware that groff had both conditionals.  The correct
>  classic behavior would be for troff to ignore anything following
>  the ".if n" conditional, and nroff would ignore input associated
>  with ".if t" .
> 
>  I learned about it when modifying the man macros for producing the
>  HP-UX man pages.  I once told a co-worker if one wants to learn and 
>  understand troff (groff), a good way would be to take a completely
>  uncommented man macro file (or mm, ms, me, etc.) and convert it into
>  a completely commented file where every operation is fully explained,
>  and do it without breaking any macros.  That's essentially how I
>  learned it.

I should probably do something like that. Up until recently I had
not put much thought into the PS output from man pages generated
by DocBook XSL stylesheets, and had mostly been concerned only
with the TTY output. So my groff knowledge needs were relatively
humble.

But it's seeming to me now that with a little fine-tuning and
conditionals here and there, I might manage to be able to get the
"man -l -Tps" output for authored-in-DocBook manpages to look at
least as good as the refentry PDF output generated by dblatex and
by the DocBook XSL-FO stylesheets+XEP.

I'll just need to read up on the groff docs a little more and ask
some questions here now and then (and hope that folks here remain
patient with me).

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/
http://sideshowbarker.net/

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