On Fri, 5 Sep 2008, Nick Stoughton wrote:
> If I understand your problem correctly, when we build the POSIX spec we
> have a similar problem. I have a macro that I ensure is called at the
> end of any run. This uses .tm to print a macro (.pn) to stderr with the
> final page number which I then save to a separate file. This file is an
> input to the next run, setting the initial page number.
>
> This is a somewhat stripped down version:
> 1. create a file called "last_page" which has the following 2 lines:
> .bp
> .tm .pn %
>
> 2. create a file called "first_page" with the single line:
> .pn 1
>
> 3. Assume your text is in foo.man:
> tbl foo.man | groff -Tps -man first_page - last_page 2>
> first_page.new > foo.ps
>
> 4. mv first_page.new first_page
>
> The above is a grossly simplified and untested version of what the POSIX
> build operation does, but I hope it serves to point you in the right
> direction!
Thank you Nick.
After one time, the first_page contains:
.pn %
So then groff later complains and the warning is saved to new
first_page.new:
first_page:1: warning: numeric expression expected (got newline)
.pn %
Then it is changed to be first_page:2: (because the first line was added).
My script is here:
:>man8pages.tmp
cp first_page.1 first_page
for f in `cat man8` ; do
if [ ! -f ${f} ]; then
continue ;
fi ;
tbl ${f} | troff -msafer -man -Tps first_page - last_page
2>first_page.new > foo.ps;
mv first_page.new first_page
cat foo.ps >> man8pages.tmp
done ;
cat man8pages.tmp | grep -v '^x stop' | grops >man8pages.ps
The new generated pages don't have new page numbers, plus the first of
each new individual man page (after the first) has the warning printed.
I also tested without -msafer. And I tried groff instead of troff but that
caused grops error:
grops:<standard input>:1:fatal error: the first command must be `x T'
And viewing it only showed the first man page and not all merged.
As you can guess I don't know groff/troff well, other than I have authored
and maintained many man and mdoc files for several years.
