Re: First attempt of printing barcodes with groff

Hi Alexis,

thank you very much! Your suggestions work like a charm and the result 
begins to look like a real barcode.

There is still a lot of tweaking necessary but the proof of concept 
demonstrates a fundamental feasability as soon as you comment out the 
.nop \n[mynum]\c line (which just shows the current digit).

Best regards,

Oliver.


On 27/11/2025 08:30, Alexis (surryhill) wrote:
> Hello Oliver,
>
> regarding your question 2. to avoid linebreaks I believe
> the main issues are within the while loop:
>
>    - leading blank space before \n+[mynum]
>    - missing \c after \n+[mynum]
>    - missing leading . before the \}
>
> The following achieves what I think you are looking for:
>
> .while (\n[mynum] < \n[@count]) \{
> .       barcode 9876543210 \n[mynum]
> \n+[mynum]\c
> .\}
>
> In addition I'd like to recommend the following minor
> improvements—although not strictly necessary I think
> they are good practice—as they have helped me avoid
> pitfalls in the past:
>
>    - adding a \ for line continuation to the opening curly brace
>      on the while line
>    - using nop to indent the \n+[mynum] line
>    - decrementing the while loop counter in the while condition
>
> .nr mynum \n[@count] 1
> .while (\n-[mynum] > 0) \{\
> .       barcode 9876543210 \n[mynum]
> .       nop \n[mynum]\c
> .\}
>
> Hope this helps, and please do share your progress on barcodes,
> I'm curious!
>
>
> Best
> Alexis
>
>
> P.S.: I'm using groff built from latest the commit f42d6c6d2
>
-- 
Dr. Oliver Corff
mailto:[email protected]