Re: [groff] [Groff] What does the "-u" in ".tmac-u" mean?

[Ted Harding]

On Sat, 2017-11-11 at 21:32 -0500, Larry Kollar wrote:
> > Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > It's not about saving disk space.  Remember that groff is an
> > interpreted language *without* a translation to an internal
> > representation.[*]  This means, for example, that a comment within a
> > loop with 1000 repeats gets parsed a thousand times, again and again.
> > Ditto for not stripped-off leading spaces.  Similarly, longer macro
> > names take a longer time for being parsed.  This can make a
> > significant difference even today for operations that should be as
> > fast as possible.
> 
> Groff is, compared to most other formatting systems, blazing-fast.
> When I was using it to format my documentation at work, on what is
> now a 10 year old laptop, it made two passes through what became
> a 700-900 page manual (depending on what was included) to produce
> a PDF in less than 2 minutes. That included the Ghostscript run to
> turn the 100MB PS file into a PDF. The book had many complex tables,
> pic files, and EPS files.
> 
> From that experience, worrying about a few milliseconds spent on
> comments seems a little excessive. If not stripping comments can
> streamline the install process, and make it easier for people delving
> into the macro sets to understand what’s happening, I think that’s
> time well spent.
> 
>       Larry

I really agree with Larry! Point well stated.
Best wishes to all,
Ted.