Hi folks, Yet another minor proposed feature change. These are coupled (ideally, in my mind), but would manifest distinguishable changes to code.
Background:
groff(1):
groff‐specific options
The following options either do not exist in GNU troff or are
interpreted differently by groff.
...
-g Run grn(1) preprocessor.
...
-I dir Works as troff’s option (see below), but also implies -g
and -s. groff passes -I options and their arguments to
soelim(1), troff(1), and output drivers; with the option
letter changed to -M, it passes the same arguments to
grn(1).
...
-s Run soelim(1) preprocessor.
...
Transparent options
The following options are passed as‐is to the formatter program
troff(1) and described in more detail in its man page.
...
-I dir Search dir for input files.
troff(1):
-I dir Search the directory dir for files (those named on the
command line; in psbb, so, and soquiet requests; and in
“\X'ps: import'”, “\X'ps: file'”, and “\X'pdf: pdfpic'”
device extension escape sequences). -I may be specified
more than once; each dir is searched in the given order.
To search the current working directory before others, add
“-I .” at the desired place; it is otherwise searched
last. -I works similarly to, and is named for, the
“include” option of Unix C compilers.
I'll quote the relevant Savannah tickets:
---snip---
grn doesn't already use the option letter "I", and this way we can
parallelize and make consistent all groff commands' use of the option
letter name space in this respect.
I anticipate no withdrawal or deprecation of `-M` in grn. I don't think
grn has any application nowadays except rendering of historical
documents. I'm not itching to break forty-year-old Makefiles, for
example. There's no migration path away from it apart from switching to
a completely different picture format.
...
Turns out Werner already renamed it once, from `-L`.
https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/src/preproc/grn/README?h=1.24.1#n58
I figure we can have GNU grn quietly accept all three.
---end snip---
I proposed to document only `-I` in grn and silently accept the other
two. This is simple to do. With that accomplished...
---snip---
If we [do the foregoing], then we can make groff(1)'s `-I` less of a
DWIM interface, and stop dragging preprocessors into the pipeline that
may not be desired.
To date, specifying `-I` is the only way (employing only groff(1)) as a
pipeline manager, a usage we strongly encourage) to get an `-M` option
of the same meaning to grn.
However, we don't know, simply from the user's specification of `-I`,
that they meant to pass a `-M` option to grn. Maybe they meant it for
soelim(1). Maybe they don't need preprocessors at all.
Hence this ticket.
---end snip---
Thoughts? Objections? Please follow-up to this thread or to the
appropriate Savannah ticket.
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68277
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68276
Regards,
Branden
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