Re: PDF macros case sensitivity

[Deri]

On Tuesday, 14 November 2023 09:12:55 GMT Michał Kruszewski via wrote:
> There is one thing about PDF macros I struggle to understand, namely the
> case sensitivity.
> 
> Example:
> .PDFPIC is uppercase
> .pdfhref is lowercase
> 
> What is more, when the user types .PDFHREF, there is no warning or error.
> The link is simply missing in the generated pdf output.
> 
> Why are some PDF macros uppercase and some lowercase?
> How do I know where to look for all PDF macros documentation?
> 
> Best regards,
> Michał Kruszewski

Probably because they are submitted by different authors, and the fact that 
.PSPIC already existed as a macro for grops and .PDFPIC was an equivalent for 
gropdf.

The pdf macros are poorly documented, there is no single document which gives 
the complete picture. The best starting point is probably pdfmark.pdf and the 
man page for gropdf, but there is also useful information in pdf.tmac. For mom 
macro users there is mom-pdf.pdf and for ms users there is information on the 
"boxes" extension to the pdf macros in msboxes.pdf. It can also sometimes be 
useful to examine the source documents for the above pdf files, to see how 
they were constructed.

As regarding identifying if you have made a mistake calling a macro, you could 
try calling groff with the -ww flag to enable all warnings.

Cheers 

Deri