Follow-up Comment #13, bug #61453 (group groff): [comment #12 comment #12:] > The .R register now has the "infinite" semantics,
(since resolution of bug #63587)
> and today I've landed demonstrators of using the infinite
> page length technique in a full-service macro package to
> manifest continuous rendering.
This appears to refer to one or both of the commits to resolve bug #65190.
By my reading of these commits, this solution is analogous to the .em example
described in the info manual, except using an empty filename rather than .em
to detect the document's end.
> Is this "native" enough to satisfy this ticket?
>
> If not, what more should I be thinking about?
(The below is off the top of my head without running any tests.)
My first concern is that the empty-filename test seems like it wouldn't work
if groff is run as part of a pipeline (meaning no filename is involved at
all). This necessitates the use of .em, which bumps up against the first of
the drawbacks to the .em technique outlined in the original submission.
The second drawback would still seem to apply regardless of which of the
end-of-input detection methods is used. -man and -mdoc don't use diversions,
so these packages are dealing with a simplified version of the
continuous-rendering problem.
The third of the drawbacks I believe has been addressed by the .R retooling.
(The drawback mentioned in comment #2 has also been addressed.)
----
My ideal world would see a user be able to specify, in principle,
.pl unlimited
at the top of a document, and have the formatter do the right thing
automatically, handling traps set relative to the page bottom as being
relative to the end of the document. This is a lot easier for the user than
having to specially deal with end of input.
Looking ahead: once such a system has been around long enough to be deemed
reliable, I expect it would be hard to argue against it being made the default
for grotty. The vast majority of terminal users will want a continuous page.
But the current architecture provides no setting that can be changed to
reliably make continuous rendering the grotty default.
I'm not sure the underlying changes to support this are simple (though the
last paragraph of comment #11 gives me some hope). But I've opened several
wishlist tickets that will require significant development time, and I'm not
expecting quick action on any of them. I don't see any urgency to this
request either.
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