Re: [Groff] PDFPIC macro

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Hello,

Peter Schaffter <address@hidden> wrote:
 |Attached is a proposal for a general use PDFPIC macro.  It's
 |modelled after and takes exactly the same arguments as PSPIC.

 |Comments and suggestions, please.

I'm not in the position to say something to PDFPIC today (direct
support would be pretty cool!), but there should be general tools
for sh(1) (perl(1)...) that can be included in a defined way and
used.  I.e., roff "libraries".

And the very same is true for generic use of external commands, as
is used by you, and what came to my mind immediately when reading:

  .  sy pdfinfo @$1 | \
  grep "Page *size" | \
  sed -e 's/Page *size: *\\([[:digit:].]*\\) *x *\\([[:digit:].]*\\).*$/\
  .nr pdf-wid (p;\\1)\\n\
  .nr pdf-ht  (p;\\2)/' \
  > /tmp/pdfpic\n[$$]

For example here.  There should be a way to safely generate
temporary file names in the temporary directory that is currently
used, whatever this is (most likely $TMPDIR).

  .  so /tmp/pdfpic\n[$$]
  .  sy rm /tmp/pdfpic\n[$$]

And even better if deletion could be accomplied directly, too.  In
general it is a pity that it is impossible to generate a complete
document with TOC, index etc. in "safe" mode.  But this is way
off-topic.

--steffen