RE: [Groff] How to create updates for revised edition of book?

[Ted Harding]

> I'm currently preparing for a revised printing of my book "The
> Complete FreeBSD" (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cfreebsd/desc.html),
> and that after less than two months.  That should be good, but the
> problem is that O'Reilly want only changed pages.  I've been wondering
> how best to do that.
>
> My current approach is pretty manual: I run diffs on the sources, find
> the corresponding pages in the PostScript output, and use Emacs to
> remove the rest.  I'm left with the feeling that there must be a
> better way.
>
> One obstacle to automatic comparison is the markup outside the print
> area, which includes the title, chapter name, and most importantly the
> format date--see the attachment.  If anybody has some good ideas about
> how to approach this, I'd be grateful.  FWIW, they want page pairs
> (both sides of the page).

Not sure that I understand the problem (?problems). But if I do understand
the "obstacle", I'm not sure what the problem is!

Since you presumably have a macro to draw the crop-marks at each
page-break (I think I'd evoke these at the bottom of the page, but never
mind), you can surely include code to plant the date etc. in this macro?

E.g.

.de cropmarks
.ds fmtDS \*[fmtDATE] The Complete BSD (\*[filename]) page \\n%
[move drawing point to top LH corner of page area]
X'\D'l -1c 0''\X'\D'l 0 -1c''\
[move to position of format date string]
\*[fmtDS]
[more cropmarks]
..

where in invoking groff you use

groff ... -dfmtDATE="`date [options]`" ...

(define string "filename" in whatever way is convenient).



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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
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Date: 05-Jul-03                                       Time: 14:10:22
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