Lightroff, an alternative troff syntax


                      John Ankarström


Introduction

Lightroff  is  an alternative syntax for troff, visually in‐
spired by SGML/XML. It differs from troff’s  default  syntax
in the following ways:

1. Lightroff  requests  begin  with a less‐than sign and end
   with a greater‐than sign, e.g., <SH 1>. These symbols may
   be escaped with a backslash.*

2. Lightroff  requests  may  be  used  inline. The following
   works as expected: (<ft B>bold<ft R>).**

3. Lightroff ignores empty lines.

4. Default troff syntax may be used between <![ and ]>.

The similarities with XML end at the  visual  level.  Unlike
XML,  lightroff  is unstructured and imperative. There is no
concept of closing tags.

Example

   <de b>\\fB\\$*\\fR<.>

   <TL>Example document
   <AU>John Doe

   <AB>Pellentesque dapibus suscipit ligula. Donec posuere augue in quam.
   Etiam vel tortor sodales tellus ultricies commodo. Suspendisse
   potenti. Aenean in sem ac leo mollis blandit. Donec neque quam,
   dignissim in, mollis nec, sagittis eu, wisi.<AE>

   <SH 1>Introduction
   <LP><b Nullam eu ante> vel est convallis dignissim. Fusce suscipit,
   wisi nec facilisis facilisis, est dui fermentum leo, quis tempor
   ligula erat quis odio. Nunc porta vulputate tellus.

───────────
  * For comparison, default troff  requests  begin
with  a newline and a control character, usually a
period or an apostrophe, and end with another new‐
line.
  ** Before an inline request, lightroff automati‐
cally inserts a \c escape when appropriate.



                        10 June 2022





                             ‐2‐


Lightroff

The program lightroff translates lightroff source  to  troff
source.

Lightroff‐mode

For  Emacs users, there is a major mode named lightroff‐mode
that provides syntax highlighting for lightroff  source.  To
further  improve  the  writing  experience, I also recommend
olivetti‐mode.

Caveats

Lightroff does not treat indented lines specially. As  such,
indentation cannot be used to convey structure.









































                        10 June 2022