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In roff systems it is possible to format text as if for output,
but instead of writing it immediately, one can divert the
formatted text into a named storage area. It is retrieved later by
specifying its name after a control character. The same name space is
used for such diversions as for strings and macros; see
Identifiers. Such text is sometimes said to be “stored in a
macro”, but this coinage obscures the important distinction between
macros and strings on one hand and diversions on the other; the former
store unformatted input text, and the latter capture
formatted output. Diversions also do not interpret arguments.
Applications of diversions include “keeps” (preventing a page break
from occurring at an inconvenient place by forcing a set of output lines
to be set as a group), footnotes, tables of contents, and indices.
For orthogonality it is said that GNU troff is in the
top-level diversion if no diversion is active (that is, formatted
output is being “diverted” immediately to the output device).
Dereferencing an undefined diversion will create an empty one of that
name and cause a warning in category ‘mac’ to be emitted.
See Warnings, for information about the enablement and suppression of
warnings. A diversion does not exist for the purpose of testing with
the d conditional operator until its initial definition ends
(see Operators in Conditionals). The following requests are used to
create and alter diversions.
Start collecting formatted output in a diversion called name. The
da request appends to a diversion called name, creating it
if necessary. If name already exists as an alias, the target of
the alias is replaced or appended to; recall Strings. The pending
output line is diverted as well. Switching to another environment (with
the ev request) before invoking di or da avoids
including any pending output line in the diversion; see
Environments.
Invoking di or da without an argument stops diverting
output to the diversion named by the most recent corresponding request.
If di or da is called without an argument when there is no
current diversion, a warning in category ‘di’ is produced.
See Warnings, for information about the enablement and suppression
of warnings.
Before the diversion.
.di yyy
In the diversion.
.br
.di
After the diversion.
.br
⇒ After the diversion.
.yyy
⇒ Before the diversion. In the diversion.
GNU troff supports box requests to exclude a partially
collected line from a diversion, as this is often desirable.
Divert (or append) output to name, similarly to the di and
da requests, respectively. Any pending output line is not
included in the diversion. Without an argument, stop diverting output;
any pending output line inside the diversion is discarded.
Before the box.
.box xxx
In the box.
.br
Hidden treasure.
.box
After the box.
.br
⇒ Before the box. After the box.
.xxx
⇒ In the box.
Apart from pending output line inclusion and the request names that
populate them, boxes are handled exactly as diversions are. All of the
following groff language elements can be used with them
interchangeably.
Diversions may be nested. The read-only string-valued register
.z contains the name of the current diversion. The read-only
register .d contains the current vertical place in the diversion.
If the input text is not being diverted, .d reports the same
location as the register nl.
The read-only register .h stores the high-water mark on the
current page or in the current diversion. It corresponds to the text
baseline of the lowest line on the page.113
.tm .h==\n[.h], nl==\n[nl]
⇒ .h==0, nl==-1
This is a test.
.br
.sp 2
.tm .h==\n[.h], nl==\n[nl]
⇒ .h==40, nl==120
As implied by the example, vertical motion does not produce text baselines and thus does not increase the value interpolated by ‘\n[.h]’.
After completing a diversion, the writable registers dn and
dl contain its vertical and horizontal sizes. Only the lines
just processed are counted: for the computation of dn and
dl, the requests da and boxa are handled as if
di and box had been used, respectively—lines that have
been already stored in the diversion (box) are not taken into account.
.\" Center text both horizontally and vertically. .\" Macro .(c starts centering mode; .)c terminates it. . .\" Disable the escape character with .eo so that we .\" don't have to double backslashes on the "\n"s. .eo .de (c . br . ev (c . evc 0 . in 0 . nf . di @c ..
.de )c . br . ev . di . nr @s (((\n[.t]u - \n[dn]u) / 2u) - 1v) . sp \n[@s]u . ce 1000 . @c . ce 0 . sp \n[@s]u . br . fi . rr @s . rm @c .. .ec
Transparently embed anything into the current diversion,
preventing requests, macro calls, and escape sequences from being
interpreted when read into a diversion. This is useful for preventing
them from taking effect until the diverted text is actually output. The
\! escape sequence transparently embeds input up to and including
the end of the line. The \? escape sequence transparently embeds
input until its own next occurrence.
anything may not contain newlines; use \! by itself to
embed newlines in a diversion. The escape sequence \? is also
recognized in copy mode and turned into a single internal code; it is
this code that terminates anything. Thus the following example
prints 4.
.nr x 1 .nf .di d \?\\?\\\\?\\\\\\\\nx\\\\?\\?\? .di .nr x 2 .di e .d .di .nr x 3 .di f .e .di .nr x 4 .f
Both escape sequences read the data in copy mode.
If \! is used in the top-level diversion, its argument is
directly embedded into GNU troff’s intermediate output. This can
be used, for example, to control a postprocessor that processes the data
before it is sent to an output driver.
The \? escape used in the top-level diversion produces no output
at all; its argument is simply ignored.
Emit contents directly to GNU troff’s intermediate output
(subject to copy mode interpretation); this is similar to \! used
at the top level. An initial neutral double quote in contents is
stripped to allow embedding of leading spaces.
This request can’t be used before the first page has started—if you
get an error, simply insert .br before the output request.
Use with caution! It is normally only needed for mark-up used by a postprocessor that does something with the output before sending it to the output device, filtering out contents again.
Unformat the diversion div in a way such that Unicode basic
Latin (ASCII) characters, characters translated with the
trin request, space characters, and some escape sequences, that
were formatted and diverted into div are treated like ordinary
input characters when div is reread. Doing so can be useful in
conjunction with the writem request. asciify can be also
used for gross hacks; for example, the following sets
register n to 1.
.tr @. .di x @nr n 1 .br .di .tr @@ .asciify x .x
asciify cannot return all items in a diversion to their source
equivalent: nodes such as those produced by the \N escape
sequence will remain nodes, so the result cannot be guaranteed to be a
pure string. See Copy Mode. Glyph parameters such as the type face
and size are not preserved; use unformat to achieve that.
Like asciify, unformat the diversion div. However,
unformat handles only tabs and spaces between words, the latter
usually arising from spaces or newlines in the input. Tabs are treated
as input tokens, and spaces become adjustable again. The vertical sizes
of lines are not preserved, but glyph information (font, type size,
space width, and so on) is retained.
Next: Punning Names, Previous: Traps, Up: GNU troff Reference [Contents][Index]