Re: New extension to gropdf

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi, Deri!

At 2021-04-02T14:11:02+0100, Deri wrote:
> I have been working on an extension to gropdf to draw boxes underneath
> the usual output from groff. The idea is to make it easier to include
> coloured frames around groff content, without having to use keeps,
> particularly if you want the frame to extend over several pages. It
> can also add a backgtound colour to the "paper” gropdf uses.

This looks great!  I haven't tried it out yet but I have definitely felt
this itch when revising Larry Kollar's ms.ms document.

> Included is my first attempt at an extension to the ms macros to make
> it easy to include coloured frames. I have not used ms very much, nor
> written macros so I'd be very grateful if people more expert than me
> could improve it, particularly in regard to proper integration with
> the ms macros.

The only problem I can see at first glance is an easy one to deal
with--name space issues.  GNU ms leaves mixed-case macro (etc.) names as
the user's playground, having squatted on all names without lowercase
letters.

> The attached archive contains the new version of gropdf. Also it
> includes the macro extension file sboxes.tmac which can be used with
> "-ms -msboxes", and an example of using the extension called
> msboxes.ms.
> 
> Please feel free to do whatever to improve it.

Thank you!  I'd like to integrate it.  On top of this feature, there are
others that ms.ms should bring to the reader's attention, like device
tags, URL support, and colored text.

The distributed file webpage.ms is a nice exhibit of what is possible
with GNU ms, but it's much too tedious to keep up to date, and
exhibition is no substitute for documentation.

Regards,
Branden

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