> > > > Vertical shrinkable (or rather, stretchable) space can > > > > be done easily with macros and a diversion. > > > > > > Well, yes, but using diversion has a lot of side > > > effects... > > > > What do you mean by "side effects"? > > Mainly that data put into a diversion can't be completely > `unformatted'. I don't feel too well in manipulating already > formatted data...
Oh, no, I wasn't thinking of unformatting the content of the diversion. I was thinking of having embedded vertical spacing macros in the diversion, which could be adjusted so that when the diversion was finally replayed onto the page, a properly aligned bottom margin would result. (See my tmac.diss at www.usm.uni-muenchen.de/people/hoffmann/roff.) I believe TeX uses a similar concept (i.e., storing ready-formatted text), only they call it "boxes", not "diversions", and TeX has an optimizer to decide where to pagebreak, not just a simple vertical-position trap. > > I can think of only one real issue (which is, however, quite > > restrictive), and that is that when formatting directly to > > the page you can use an arbitrary number of position traps, > > while inside a diversion you have only one (!) diversion > > trap. > > Yep. Surprisingly, I'm only aware of a single macro package > which uses a diversion trap: My `underline' macro. > > > (Would it make sense to lift this restriction and implement > > more traps in a diversion?) > > Definitely. It's on troff's TODO list since ever. Do you > volunteer? Unfortunately I'm rather busy at the moment, so I'll have to decline, at least for the coming few months. Fortunately, I have so far managed to live with the one-trap-per-diversion restriction, and I use groff only for fun, so I'm not overly dependent on it. _______________________________________________ Groff mailing list Groff@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff