Re: [Groff] PDF_IMAGE and MOM

[Dale Snell]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2014 01:32:09 +0100
Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi Dale,
> 
> Dale Snell wrote on Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 02:21:09PM -0800:
> > On Mon, 03 Nov 2014 21:23:32 +0000 Keith Marshall wrote:
> >> On 03/11/14 20:16, Dale Snell wrote:
> >>> On Mon, 03 Nov 2014 16:36:04 +0000 Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> 
> >>>> BTW, your mombog.mom had a blank line at the start and the
> >>>> comments were lines starting `\#' rather than `.\#'.  One or the
> >>>> other might have an affect on your attempt at A3 in mom, I don't
> >>>> know.
> 
> >>> "\#" is a _groff_ comment,
> 
> >> Yes, but it's explicitly a GNU troff extension to standard troff
> >> grammar; it may not produce the desired effect, were you to process
> >> your input through any other troff implementation.
> 
> > True.  I know it's a GNU extension, but I wasn't considering the
> > use of \# in a non-GNU [nt]roff.  I suspect it would result in an
> > error message.  I certainly hope so, anyway.
> 
> Hope again:
> 
>    $ cat testfile
>   first line \# comment
>   .br
>   second line
>
>    $ /usr/local/bin/groff -Tascii testfile
>   first line .br second line

Okay, this I would expect.

>    $ /usr/local/heirloom-doctools/bin/nroff testfile
>   first line .br second line
>   # also documented in the Heirloom Nroff/Troff User Manual
>   # Heirloom added quite some GNU compat in the past, in general

Ah, okay.  I didn't know that Heirloom had added some of the Groff
extensions.  Good to know.

>    $ /usr/local/plan9/bin/nroff testfile
>   first line # comment
>   second line

Oops.  So, if I understand this right, plan9 nroff saw the \# and
escaped the #.  But # has no meaning beyond its literal self, so "#
comment" was inserted in the first line.  If I'd thought about it
earlier, I would have realized that something along those lines would
happen.  Ah well, live and learn, I guess.  :-)

> It's hard to add something as fundamental as comment syntax
> in an afterthought without breaking older tools.

True indeed.  It's good that Groff retains the original comment
syntax.  If it had simply _replaced_ the old with the new, that would
have gotten ugly.

> It *is* nice that such compat testing has become so easy with
> the ready made ports we have around (plan9 is already in the
> OpenBSD ports tree, and the upcoming Heirloom and GNU troff
> releases will be committed as soon as they are officially
> released next week or so, i already have them tested and 
> installed locally :).

The 'roff community seems to be pretty friendly, and happy to help
each other.  That's good to see.  Not all the open-source communities
work so well together, alas.

--Dale

-- 
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual
way.  This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of
complaining.
                -- Jeff Raskin

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature