Re: How to use refer macros-agnostic way?

[p . piatrou]

Ralph,

Thank you for this valuable advice.
I will try to use it, especially and hopefully for exploring the internal 
workings of some macro sets like pdfmark.

Piotr


Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> wrote ..
> Hi Piotr,
> 
> Tadziu wrote:
> > > I quess that groff -R automatically activates refer.tmac and all
> > > registers like [F become available. Correct?
> >
> > No, -R only filters the input document through the "refer"
> > preprocessor before processing it with the actual formatter "troff".
> 
> See groff(1)'s -V option to better understand what's happening.  In a
> way, groff just obscures the workings for convenience, and I'm not sure
> that's a good idea.  It may be better to avoid it and use the underlying
> commands whilst you're learning.
> 
>     $ groff -V /dev/null
>     troff -Tps /dev/null | grops
>     $ groff -V -R /dev/null
>     refer /dev/null | troff -Tps | grops
> 
> > For example, troff.org lists M. E. Lesk's "Some Applications of
> > Inverted Indexes on the UNIX System" as providing a basic overview of
> > how refer works.
> 
> https://troff.org/papers.html#refer
> 
> -- 
> Cheers, Ralph.