Concluding on HTML rendering I would like to conclude a bit on this interesting dialogue about HTML renderring.
We have talked about that groff low-level-markup is not so suitable for converting to SGML variants because groff markup does not follow a pattern that harmonizes well with SGML and related markup. We have talked about that if a direct translation of MOM markup could be made, it would provide a much better translation to SGML variants because it largely follows the same structure and is made for the purpose of such interaction. The problem is just that there is no such translator for MOM markup and that it will take several weeks full time work to write one. Then Dorai came to the pitch and drew attention to troff2page Troff2page seems to work very well and to be a bit of an intermediate between low-level translation and high-level translation. Troff2page translates groff low level reguests, ms-markup, table-markup and man-markup directly to HTML. This it does well based on what I have tried. At the same time, troff2page low system resource demands so it will be simpler and more effective than Docbook and Latex and run efficiently on small machines. That is, groff / ms markup may well be used as a multiconvertible markup in the same way as it is the intention of pandoc-markdown. It can be simplified, similar to markdown, so the source file is readable and virtually undisturbed in itself. At the same time, you will be able to achieve far higher accuracy and control in setting up, for example, ps / pdf output than you can with markdown. Plus tiff2page is actually being activly develuped by Dorai (thanks for Dorai :-)). A problem that is often mentioned when talking about Groff conversion here in this list is that footnotes do not appear in the HTML version. I rarely use footnotes in my documents so I do not know how troff2page handles these, but perhaps Dorai has also found a solution to the footnote problem, so also those who writes more complicated texts could translate their texts into HTML (and thus to other formats) without any big problems. If you want to use troff2page, just be aware that you can only use Groff basic-requests, table-requests, MS-requests and man-reguestes. So you can not use MOM or mm macropacks. Niether can you use your own defined macros or aliasses. One has to adhere to the above defined requests. However, one can make ones own "aliasse" by making ons own preprocessor using shell script/sed/awk to convert one's own formatting codes to regulate groff / ms request before converting with troff2page. For everyday use, it means I can start every new document in the same way. I use a very simple template of groff and ms markup that looks fine in plain text if that's what I need it for and that can be expanded with more requsts if my document later becomes a more advanced pdf or a html document. Thank you for inspiration, advice and guidance. Yours sincerely Mikkel Meinike Nielsen
