Re: Proper usage of .rd? Tutorial or Example?

[onf]

On Tue Dec 3, 2024 at 11:10 PM CET, Robert Thorsby wrote:
> If I may be permitted an observation.
>
> On 4/12/24 08:08, onf wrote:
> > [...]
>
> The OP is attempting to shoehorn groff into doing something it was 
> designed expressly *not* to do in order to avoid using well known 
> programming that is designed to do precisely what he wants.

Yeah; I hadn't checked new messages until after I sent it.

> As I understand it (and Doug and others will correct me if I am wrong) 
> groff was designed not to be interactive. It took, and continues to this 
> day to take, an input file which it then processes without any 
> intervention by the user.

Well, the existence of the `rd` request suggests some minimal
interactivity might have been intended; groff_diff(7) doesn't
list it as something that was added by groff. And I guess it's
up to him whether he really wants to try make this work in troff.

Personally I dislike things that prompt me for a bunch of data
interactively like this instead of letting me provide it through
flags or a file (that I can then edit using my favorite editor),
which is why I wouldn't do it that way even if groff's conditionals
and string processing facilities weren't such a joke.

> Of course, during the decades of its existence 
> there have been huge developments in the syntax and structure of the 
> input file and the arguments and options to groff itself, with the 
> result that groff is arguably the most powerful typesetting program on 
> the planet.

I don't think that's true, although it might seem that way when
compared with MS Word (but that's not a typesetting program).

There are things that Heirloom troff can do that groff can't;
check the attached file. It also wouldn't surprise me at all
if there were things that TeX can do that no troff can, and
likewise for the paid typesetting programs like Adobe InDesign.

~ onf

htroff-just.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document