At 2025-10-24T19:36:49-0400, Peter Schaffter wrote: > On Fri, Oct 24, 2025, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > At 2025-10-24T13:28:11-0400, Peter Schaffter wrote: > > > mom files should be processed with pdfmom(1), not test-groff. > > > > That's a more categorical statement than I was expecting. (Though > > you did say only "should", not "must".) > > Funny you should mention it. I had a little internal quibble with > the wording myself. :)
You know you're ready for standards committee membership when...
> > I had thought that pdfmom was only _required_ if there were forward
> > references in the document. That would be the same reason that the
> > old DWB troff mm(1) command existed,[1] and why we have mmroff(1) in
> > groff.[2]
>
> There are circumstances where pdfmom is required for other than
> forward references. Flex-spacing, for example, piggybacks on pdfmom's
> dual pass command line. It's not the default, though, hence the
> cautionary "should".
Fair. mmroff(1) is analogous, because features other than forward
references militate for its use with groff mm(7).
mmroff(1):
mmroff is a simple wrapper for groff, used to expand cross
references in mm documents; see groff_mm(7). It runs groff with
the -mm option twice, first with -z and -rRef=1 to populate crossâ
reference and index files with their corresponding entries, and
then again to produce the document. It also handles the inclusion
of PostScript images with the PIC macro. Documents that do not use
these features of groff mm (the INITI, IND, INDP, INITR, SETR,
GETHN, GETPN, GETR, GETST, and PIC macros) do not require mmroff.
(Hmm, I see an avenue for improvement here.[1])
So I guess I'm not surprised after all. Even with featureful macro
packages, _sometimes_ you can get away with single-pass formatting. If
you don't know whether you can or not, use the prescribed wrapper.
And don't combine `-ww` with `-mom`. :)
Regards,
Branden
[1] s/again/without/
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