Hi Deri, At 2022-11-15T23:20:49+0000, Deri wrote: > On Tuesday, 15 November 2022 19:21:05 GMT G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > At 2022-11-15T18:35:35+0000, Deri wrote: > > > Incidentally using \X'papersize ..." you can mix portrait and > > > landscape in the same document. > > > > It's a shame that gropdf(1) is the only output driver that recognizes > > this device control command. Like hyperlinks, it's a feature that seems > > to want increased standardization, at least within groff. > > > > Regards, > > Branden > > The man grodvi page defines \X'papersize:..." so gropdf is not unique.
It's not the same syntax (the colon should NOT be used), the argument
order is different (width, length instead of length, width), and there
is no _specific_ support for this; the contents of the \X escape are
simply blasted to the output DVI file as a special. No interpretation
or parsing is done.
Here's what grodvi(1) says about the feature in groff Git HEAD.
By design, the DVI format doesn’t care about the physical dimensions
of the output medium. Instead, grodvi emits the equivalent to TeX’s
\special{papersize=width,length} on the first page; dvips (or
another DVI driver) then sets the page size accordingly. If either
the page width or length is not positive, no papersize special is
output.
A device control escape sequence \X'anything' is translated to the
same DVI file instructions as would be produced by
\special{anything} in TeX; anything cannot contain a newline.
An experiment is revealing.
$ printf '\\X@supercalifragilisticexpialodocious@' | groff -Tdvi | strings
papersize=8.268in,11.693in
"supercalifragilisticexpialodocious
color gray 0
Try this nonsense with grotty and it will tell you it's ignoring it.
$ printf '\\X@supercalifragilisticexpialodocious@' | groff -Tascii | strings
grotty:<standard input>:15: X command without 'tty:' tag ignored
grodvi's approach also complicates the interpretation of any device
control commands by the DVI driver, frustrating future enhancements. I
propose:
1. Migrate this feature to require a "dvi:" or "dvi: special" tag at
the beginning of the device control command, in alignment with most
other groff output drivers.
2. When implementing a groff-generic 'papersize' device control command
as gropdf(1) recognizes it, translate it into a DVI special as is
currently done, not forgetting to swap the argument order.
This doesn't seem to have ever bothered anyone so I reckon it's not
groff 1.23-critical.
What do you think?
Regards,
Branden
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