On Thursday 04 June 2009 01:36:10 Steve Izma wrote: > Pdflatex is just a tool for > going from latex source files to PDF output --a convenience tool, > like lilypond --pdf; I think someone has crafted a shortform to > accomplish this with groff as well,
I suspect you may be referring to my `pdfroff' tool here. > but given the filtering > abilities of groff (with PS output) and ps2pdf, this is pretty > trivial. While it is true that pdfroff can readily accomplish the trivial conversion from groff --> PostScript --> PDF, that is *not* what this tool is primarily about. The real reason for the creation of pdfroff was to facilitate the production of PDF documents including interactive cross references, as established through the use of the `pdfmark' macro set. The processing needed to implement that extra level of PDF functionality is anything but trivial, (and most of it occurs as multiple-pass groff processing, long before any PostScript is ever generated). Your throw away "this is pretty trivial" remark does rather tend to sell pdfroff (and pdfmark.tmac) short. -- Regards, Keith.
