Re: [Groff] Re: begin page blues

[Miklos Somogyi]

On 21/02/2006, at 7:42 PM, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> > > This should be rather straightforward to implement (and IMHO it's
> > > always a good idea to have both escapes and requests for the same
> > > thing).  Can you suggest request names for those two escapes?
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > E.g. a version that uses save/restore rather than just
> > pushing/popping a dictionary, that may allocate .sp space for the
> > PS, keeps it on the page, bypasses it altogether if the page is not
> > wanted (so as to avoid .so requests reading-in images
> > unnecessarily), the ability to mix ps and groff in the macro (that
> > requires the definition of an end-of-ps, other than ..
>
> Hmm, this won't work basically.  groff basically does produce
> device-independent output, and the complete \X and \Y functionality is
> in the device drivers.  It would be nice to have a set of macros which
> implements your wishes, but I can't build this into the troff binary.


Well, at least I've tried :-)
I only have one philosophical question-mark. When I was a youngster 
(yes!), device independence
and pre- and post-processors were good ideas and necessary.
I wonder whether it still is the case.
We, who got used to them, are comfortable with them.
I'm not so sure about today's youngsters.
Probably they would say that the dust has settled, Adobe won (whether 
they like this or not), so
why concentrate on anything else than ps and pdf.
And perhaps they would like a single application better, a groff with 
built-in tbl, eqn, me or mm etc,
producing, say, only ps.
I don't know, but sometimes it pays if one questions his/her whole 
approach As Time Goes By.


> > Btw, if you implement \Y's equivalent, then there is not much point
> > in doing \X.
>
> Right.  So we only have to invent a single request name :-)
>
>
>     Werner

What about "ps-mac" for PostScript Macro? If you don't like it, you can 
always say that you got it for free :-[[

Miklos