[Groff] pdfmom question

[Peter Schaffter]

This is a question for Deri James.

Is there some reason why, in pdfmom, the system() call to groff at
line 125 does not include '$preconv' in the first pass?

I've been working on flexible vertical whitespace in the mom macros,
using pdfmom's PDF.EXPORT to assign first-pass strings with the
correct amount of flex-space for each page.

I was using pdfmom to process my test file, which needed both the -t
and -k flags.  At first, I couldn't get my flex spacing system to
perform reliably.  After a couple of days of debugging and coming up
with nothing, it occured to me to process the file long-hand at the
command line instead of using pdfmom, like this

  groff -Tpdf -dPDF.EXPORT=1 \
  -mom -z -t -k test-file.mom 2>&1 \
  | grep '^\. *ds' | \
  groff -Tpdf -mom -t -k - test-file.mom  \
  > test-file.pdf

That's when I discovered that pdfmom wasn't picking up the -t and -k
flags on the first groff pass.  Inserting $preconv into the first
pass in pdfmom solved the reliability issue.  I can't figure out why
it isn't there already.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
http://www.schaffter.ca