Re: [Groff] Page classes in groff output to support reordering o

[T. Kurt Bond]

Larry Jones writes:
> T. Kurt Bond writes:
> > 
> > It might be useful if gtroff had a predefined read-only number
> > register, say \n[.pp] (for physical page), that recorded the physical
> > page number independent of what \n% had.  This number would start at 1
> > and be increased by 1 at the start of each new page, regardless of
> > what the user has requested with .bp or .pn.  The "p" command in
> > gtroff output could be followed by something like
> > 
> >     x X page: 1 i 3
> > 
> > where "1" is the page number from \n%, "i" is the page number
> > according to the current current format for % requested by .af, and 
> > "3" is the physical page of the document.
> 
> I think something along these lines is definitely needed, but I want to
> caution against tying it to \n% too strongly -- many macro packages use
> their own register(s) and/or string(s) for the page number and
> completely ignore \n%, so you need a mechanism that the macro package
> can use to communicate the information rather than building something in
> to groff that isn't modifiable.

That's a very good point.  I guess the actually output of 
"x X page: 1 i 3" could be done by each individual macro package using
some variation on "\X'page: x y z'"; the physical page register would
still need to be part of groff, I think.

The orignal message was about reordering pages; is the 
"a page-makeup postprocessor and associated macro package (like pm and
-mpm)" mentioned in the PROJECTS file in groff's source distribution
something to do page reordering?  Does anyone have any more details on
this?  I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was a Usenix
paper on something like this; does anyone remember that? 
-- 
T. Kurt Bond, address@hidden