[bug #61453] [nroff] request native mechanism for continuous (non-paginated) rendering

[G. Branden Robinson]

Follow-up Comment #4, bug #61453 (project groff):

[comment #3 comment #3:]
> [comment #0 original submission:]
> > groff could provide a new, dedicated tmac file for this task
> > and properly document its inclusion and use.  The existing
> > macros in an.tmac could be leveraged for this if they're
> > suitable for general use.
> 
> My guess now is that they aren't.  As I understand it, in contrast to the
one-long-page system the Texinfo manual gives an example of, the -man macros
set top and bottom margins of internal pages to 0, so that, even though nroff
outputs multiple "pages," the breaks between them are invisible, effectively
_looking_ like one long page.
> 
> This is fine in the -man language, which doesn't support footnotes.  But
it's unclear how this could be generalized to work with the full-service macro
packages, most of which do include mechanisms to render footnotes at the
bottom of the page.  In the one-long-page case, this pushes footnotes to the
end of the output.  But for multiple pages with invisible page breaks, this
would effectively put footnotes at random-seeming places in the middle of the
text.
> 
> This isn't to say that the problem is insurmountable, only that a
straightforward adaptation of the -man system probably won't cover the
complexities of existing macro packages or unfettered roff.

Hi, Dave!

I would not have described the man(7) package's "continuous
rendering mode" that way, but you are in fact correct.  It can
and often does render multiple pages, but because headers and
footers are disabled, the troff page boundaries are difficult to
discern.

I guess would only add that the zero-sized vertical margins
aren't anything special that the `an` package does; these are
the margins inherited from troff's defaults.


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