Hi Martin, At 2026-02-08T12:27:32+0100, Martin Lemaire wrote: > , > /| | > |--| ave you heard of something, perhaps a macro > | |) that would help me insert a letter from > figlet as a drop cap at the beginning of a given > paragraph ? Is grotty suited for such ornaments ? > I assume it could look something like : > > 1. cut first letter from paragraph > 2. *somehow* invoke figlet to draw desired drop cap > 3. read drop cap's (w)idth & (h)eight > 4. set the paragraph, indenting h lines by w characters > 5. insert the drop cap in the indented space > > My understanding of *roff is limited.
I doubt it's impossible but it seems like it would be a tricky. Thinking through the problem, here are my expectations. It would require unsafe mode because you'd need to use the `pso` request to run figlet, possibly with options configured by the input document in some way. It would require setting up a diversion and formatting the output of figlet into it. It would require the document (or macro package) to measure the height and width of that diversion, so as to configure a temporary indent (in the `in`, but not the `ti` sense) in the amount of the width of the diversion, and lasting for as many vees as the height of the diversion. These are in the `dl` and `dh` registers, respectively. You might be able to get away without measuring the height if this was an _input_ parameter to figet, because you'd already know it. The document or macro package would have to decide what to do if the drop cap ends up being taller than the paragraph, or would spring a trap because the diversion's height would cause it to impinge on a footnote area, footer, the bottom of the page's text area, or the actual page bottom. As above, if you already know the height because it's an input parameter, the trap problem should be avoidable by preceding the paragraph with a `ne` request using that height (in vees) as argument. Anyone feel like taking this on as a project and want to contribute it to groff 1.25? :) Regards, Branden
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