On Thu, Aug 6, 2026 at 8:57 AM G. Branden Robinson <[email protected]> wrote: > To further/over- qualify this point, mom(7) is giving the formatter > something to format by generating some embedded PostScript.
...embedded PostScript that does some internal initialization and puts nothing on the page. It's not obvious to readers that this qualifies as "something to format." Naively, one could see it as akin to a roff file that contains only .nr lines; both are setting the stage for a show that never materializes. I understand why one produces output while the other doesn't, but I don't think the line about it in the manual captures the difference. Nor do I think it needs to; this section is about how groff differs from other troffs. AT&T troff always produces output; groff does not always. For the purposes of pointing out that difference, there's little need to get into the minutiae of what constitutes "something to format."
