Re: [Groff] single page output

[Erich Hoffmann]

Am Mon, 22 Mar 2004 07:26:18 -0500 schrieb "Alejandro Lopez-Valencia"
<address@hidden>:

> On ,  broke the silence of shunyata and uttered:
[...]
> Are you porting some little known macro package to groff or creating
> your own?
>

A package of my own.

   Some time ago I asked for help in this list to implement a chess
documentation with groff.  I got my help and implemented it, but in
a bit crude manner which works, but isn't really handy.  So I decided
to learn more on groff, and the best way to do that I thought was the
creation of a tmac file, watching the problems arise and solving them.

   But I got lost in the tmac file when it became too big.  So I decided
to write a tool, i.e. a small tmac file to insert comments in another
tmac file, numbered headings, indexes and so on, to have a better
orientation.  (The indexes to keep track of the macros I wrote to avoid
double definitions.)  At least this project, I called it the "ac"
macros, taught me some basics on writing macros, and though it is a bit
"brute force", it works.  I started to write another tmac file with "ac"
to edit some special texts with it, and now I can manage that better.
This "ac" will never equal ms, mm or mom, but I just want to learn.

   Now I am realizing that with the same tmac file I could insert
documentation in e.g. XML etcetera.  The comments in any language
normally are inserted manually: But if you want to change any sequence
or numbering, then alas! poor Yorick.  The groff facilities seemed
a good solution to this problem.  With the aid of my tool now I can
manage better.  This is the context.  I'm using it for my programming
experiences, writing documented source code.

    This may well sound a bit mad, but someone in this list told me that
even a pointless project can make a lot of sense, because it teaches us
something, and I think that was well said.

Best,
erich

Hope I wasn't too verbose. - Now I'll be away for a week or so and I
can't read incoming mail.