[Groff] several newbie questions

[Ulf Martin]

hi groff users

i am *very* new to groff (3 days)
and still in doubt wether it is the right tool for me.
here is a set of questions
(technical ones first, then more conceptual ones).

this mail might be summed up to the question:
is there a proper document, suitable for beginners
as well as a refernce on all aspects of groff?


1. how can i avoid space char's between to lines of input

i.e.

   foo
   bar

should become

   foobar

background:
i'd like to write a citation environment which
encloses the citation in guillemets, \(Fo and \(Fc,
and put everything in italics.

i tried

.de QX
.I
\(Fo
..
.de QY
\(Fc
.R
..

but then

.QX
foo bar
.QY

generates

 << foo bar >>

that is, space before and after the text.
how can this be avoided.

of cource i could write

\(Fofoo bar\(Fc

but then i don't have a proper citation environment,
that is i can't change it easily back to say "foo bar"
if i needed that for some reason.


2. guillemets in html

surprisingly the guillemets don't print in the html output
(\(Fo is &laquo; , \(Fc &raquo; since html 3.2)

another character i'd like to have is the euro sign (&euro;)
also in postscript.


3. ms or mm?

i have created a little test doucuments to try all this out,
they are appended with this mail.

reading through the docs i found that most people seem to use
the tmacs mm or ms as a start for document formatting.
which one is better (e.g. more general purpose) for the beginner?

i found that ms works okay,
i found that i could make light changes easily
(e.g. month names to german)
but it looks like one can't change the layout of headings easily.

if i am using the uft8 ouput, the text in italics is
interpsersed with ctrl-H characters.

   $ groff -Tutf8 -R -ms -muma-paper rnk.ms > rnk.txt

i learned ms mostly through
 dean allen provins' "groff an friends"

for mm i used
 joergen heaggs's "manual"

mm seems to allow to change header layout,
but other things don't seem to work:
the

.[
...
.]

prints the reference as such (i.e. "[Löw 2001]",
but no reference section is printed (which ms does).

output says it doesn't know .COVEND

here is the entire error message:

   C:\WINNT\system32\cmd.exe /c groff -R -mm rnk.mm > rnk.ps
   rnk.mm:26: warning: `MONTH9' not defined
   rnk.mm:50: can't find macro file `mm/1.cov'
   rnk.mm:70: warning: `COVEND' not defined
   rnk.mm:94: warning: `]<' not defined
   rnk.mm:96: warning: `]-' not defined
   rnk.mm:104: warning: `][' not defined
   rnk.mm:105: warning: `]>' not defined

i am using the cygwin version on windows:

   $ groff -v
   GNU groff version 1.17.2
   Copyright (C) 1989-2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   GNU groff comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
   You may redistribute copies of groff and its subprograms
   under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
   For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.

   called subprograms:

   GNU troff (groff) version 1.17.2
   GNU grops (groff) version 1.17.2


4. is groff the right markup tool

i am looking for a tool that

(a) allows me to generate ps (and pdf) output
as well as html from a single source;

(b) i want to separate style settings from content;

(b) the markup language should be concise, fast to type;

btw
does anybody know anything about webroff?

   http://www.bitmover.com/webroff/

i emailed tham but never got a response.

also:
can the html output generate css style files.

thank you for your kind help.
(and for the patience reading up to this point
through this clumsy mail.)

bye
--
ulf martin
address@hidden

.RP


.hpf hyphen.den

.nr PS 12
.nr FF 2
.ds HF 3 2 1 1 1
.ds HP 0 0 0 0 0

.de QX
.I
\(Fo
..
.de QY
\(Fc
.R
..



.ds REFERENCES Bibliographie
.ds ABSTRACT 
.ds TOC Inhalt
.ds MONTH1 Januar
.ds MONTH2 Februar
.ds MONTH3 März
.ds MONTH4 April
.ds MONTH5 Mai
.ds MONTH6 Juni
.ds MONTH7 Juli
.ds MONTH8 August
.ds MONTH9 September
.ds MONTH10 Oktober
.ds MONTH11 November
.ds MONTH12 Dezember
.ds MO \\*[MONTH\n[mo]]
.ds DY \n[dy]. \*[MO] \n[year]



.de H1
.NH 1
..
.de H2
.NH 2
.I
..

.R1
database biblio.ref
accumulate
bracket-label " [" "]" "; "
et-al " et al." 1 2 # 3
date-as-label D.+yD.y%a*D.-y# qualifies the date in the reference text
no-label-in-reference # removes label in reference list
label "@ ' ' D.y%a*" # adds disambiguating letter in text and label
sort A+D+ # sort by first author surname, then by date
move-punctuation
.R2




.TL 
Mein toller Text
.AU
Ulf Martin
.AI
Meine Anschrift
.AB
Kurze Beschreibung
.AE
.H1 
Erster Teil
.H2
Erster Abschnitt
.LP
Fussnotentest.\**
.FS
Klappt
.FE
Das Zitieren mit Guillemets
.QX
nicht sonz wie gewünscht. 
.QY
\&
.[
[ ]. Raumsoziologie
.]
\&. 


.hpf hyphen.den
.nr FD 6

.nr PS 12
.nr FF 2
.ds HF 3 2 1 1 1
.ds HP 0 0 0 0 0
.ds Rp Bibliographie
.ds App Anhang
.ds ABSTRACT ""
.ds TOC Inhalt
.ds MO1 Januar
.ds MO2 Februar
.ds MO3 März
.ds MO4 April
.ds MO5 Mai
.ds MO6 Juni
.ds MO7 Juli
.ds MO8 August
.ds MO9 September
.ds MO10 Oktober
.ds MO11 November
.ds MO12 Dezember
.ds MO \\*[MONTH\n[mo]]
.ds DY \n[dy]. \*[MO] \n[year]

.de QX
.I
\(Fo
..
.de QY
\(Fc
.R
..


.R1
database biblio.ref
accumulate
bracket-label " [" "]" "; "
et-al " et al." 1 2 # 3
date-as-label D.+yD.y%a*D.-y# qualifies the date in the reference text
no-label-in-reference # removes label in reference list
label "@ ' ' D.y%a*" # adds disambiguating letter in text and label
sort A+D+ # sort by first author surname, then by date
move-punctuation
.R2

.COVER

.TL 
Mein toller Text
.AU "Ulf Martin"
.AI 
Meine Anschrift
.AB
Kurze Beschreibung
.AE

.COVEND

.H1 "Erster Teil"
.H2 "Erster Abschnitt"
.LP
Fussnotentest.\*F
.FS
Klappt
.FE
Das Zitieren mit Guillemets
.QX
nicht sonz wie gewünscht. 
.QY
\&
.[
[ ]. Raumsoziologie
.]
\&.

%A Martina Löw 
%T Raumsoziologie
%I Suhrkamp
%C Frankfurt/Main
%D 2001