Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!verber
From: verber@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu (Mark A. Verber)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Need help using /usr/lib/cpp for generic text
Message-ID: <840@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 22 Sep 89 14:17:22 GMT
References: <838@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: verber@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu (Mark A. Verber)
Organization: Ohio State University, Physics Department
Lines: 19

I would like to thank the >10 who have responded to my request.  All
but one person suggested for me to use m4.  This would normally be the
best solution (I thought about it too) except that m4 wants
conditionals to be enclosed in quoting characters There is no pair of
quoting characters that aren't used in my document.  Square brackets
came the closest to being usable, but the chapter on VMS uses a lot of
[].  I wanted to ifdef large sections of text... multiple paragraphs.
Rrying to make sure that I have none of the quoting characters in
the text itself was just too risky. 

The solutions I am using right now was suggested by maart@cs.vu.nl.
I use sed to tag all the cpp controls, run the document through
cpp, and run the doc through sed again looking for the tags and nuking
tags and extra <cr>.
-- 
Mark A. Verber
System Programmer, Physics Department, Ohio State University
verber@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu
(614) 292-8002