Re: [Groff] which request tells postprocessor about papersize

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

> > Now there are times when I want to put the papersize inside of my
> > groff file and thus will have to tell the postprocessor about what
> > I did.  Could anyone tell me how to do that.
> 
> You can't -- in TeX you can't do that either.  In the not too distant
> future I'll implement some paper size control with environment
> variables and the locale.


Everything is possible :-)

1. If the papersize is fixed (i.e., already contained as
   a constant string in the groff file), you can grep (or
   sed or awk) it out beforehand and pass it as an argument
   to groff.

2. If the papersize is only determined at runtime (when
   the formatter runs) you need to delay the startup of
   the postprocessor until the papersize is known.
   Have troff write the papersize into some auxiliary
   file (e.g., "tmp.papersize"), and do something like

     groff [options] -Z groff_file >tmp.intermediate
     grops -p`cat tmp.papersize` <tmp.intermediate >output.ps
     rm tmp.papersize tmp.intermediate