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Re: [Groff] ideas for splitting -Thtml output
From: |
Gaius Mulley |
Subject: |
Re: [Groff] ideas for splitting -Thtml output |
Date: |
26 Jun 2003 14:17:35 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 |
address@hidden (Dorai Sitaram) writes:
> Two things should be taken care for multiple-file
> output:
>
> 1. We need to know what to name these files.
> Since groff could take its input from stdin, there may
> not be a canonical file name we can associate with the
> input. I suggest www.tmac supply a macro called
> .JOBNAME that will allow the user to identify what the
> basename of the intended output file should be. (The
> name .JOBNAME was only chosen in analogy to TeX's
> \jobname, you can use a better name.) Output files
> can be <jobname>.html followed by auxiliary files
> <jobname-Z-H-<num>>.html, where <num> is 1, 2, 3 ...
> (Again I'm using my TeX2page convention, but it can
> be changed.)
>
> If .JOBNAME is not specified, there will be only one
> output file, as now.
there could also be a command line option which -P-j (say)
which can override JOBNAME or allows users to omit JOBNAME.
>
> 2. Any references to anchors in the groff input need
> to be qualified with the name of the output file they
> occur in. This includes the <a name>'s used for
> section-headings and referred to in the ToC. It also
> includes the anchors introduced by the .TAG macro.
>
> .URL will continue to work for external links, but if
> it refers to something internal, i.e., an anchor
> specified by a .TAG, it may fail, because we need the
> particular output HTML file the anchor is in. We can
> therefore have a www.tmac macro called .REF that is
> specifically to refer to such internal anchors.
yes this would work.
> Changes to the HTML generator will essentially comprise
> using the information from .JOBNAME to generate
> the multiple output HTML files, and to keep track of
> which output files each .TAG argument should go in.
>
> Automatic HTML-page-breaking can occur as now at the
> user-specified .NH and .SH level. In addition there
> can be an .HTMLEJECT macro that the user can use to
> force an HTML page break at that point.
>
> I'd appreciate any input on whether adding these
> features to the -Thtml generator is feasible.
> Making sure that the <a href> pointing to an internal
> TAG can include the correct output HTML filename
> requires looking at the input twice, but it appears
> that -Thtml is looking at the input document twice
> anyway (for PostScript inclusion).
yes adding these features is definitely feasible, there is no problem
in scanning the ditroff output a number of times as grohtml stores the
whole lot in memory before processing it.
The file splitting code shouldn't be too complex either as
all device drivers have a neat output file mechanism.
Gaius