[Groff] html-mm stuff

[Chuck Robey]

Peter Schaffter wrote:
> On December 30, 2009 01:09:07 pm Chuck Robey wrote:
>> In a language like groff, anything that works is beautiful.
> 
> ROTFL
> 
> Elegantly said, Chuck, and true.  It ought to be the official motto
> of the list.

I've got a friend named TomZ (ex gov't analyst, big iron man) who is always
sending me the best little one-liners.  Here's one I was laughing at:

“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it
so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far
more difficult.”
    -- C.A.R. Hoare

That happens to be *my* religious feelings.

Anyhow, since I got no real comments from anyone about my fix strategy, I
figured that the last advice I got, to put my fixes into the m.tmac, was what I
should do, so I finally figured out (and tested) the stack macros there, and
assembled a set of pseudolanguage fixes to all the mm list macros (excepting
.LB).  The only things I don't know are how to handle the direct HTML output ...
I know what to put out for my lists, but I don't know if I can just put that out
directly, or if it'd really conflict bigtime with the stuff being done in
www.tmac.  I can't use the list macros in www.tmac, they're broken (I think) for
list embedding (they don't correctly close html tags) as I tested using Lynx for
checks.

So, if anyone knows what rules I ought to follow to output stuff that is direct
html, I'd REALLY appreciate a comment.  I haven't got any experience in
correctly interfacing with the html code at all.  I can do it (probably) if no
one comments, but it sure will take me a lot of time, and probably not be done
to everyone's satisfaction.

That doesn't mean I won't go back sometime and retrofit things into www.tmac
(Werner did say he'd accept things like that) but my first goal is to get  the
mm macros html lists working.

If all this triggers someone to tell me I'm getting ready to do something wrong,
I'm still quite willing to accept criticism (I haven't got too much time
invested yet).  If the advice comes after I've done all my code and all my
testing (into a potentially bad place) I'm not going to be so willing to fix
things.  I'll just use it myself, and call it done.

I *think* I've read everything you folks have said, but I know I have a bad
habit of skipping over some things.  If I've screwed up, let me know, I won't
get mad over it.