Re: [Groff] setpagedevice

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Whilst transferring things from my old SGI to the new shiny PowerMac
> I got some problems with my PS files: my new viewers clipped and/or
> rotated them.  The use of setpagedevice to explicitly define page
> size put an end to the miseries.  This politically correct way to do
> things was introduced in Level2 but was not really enforced until
> Level3 came along.

>From the NEWS file (version 1.19):

o The paper size is now emitted via the %%DocumentMedia and PageSize
  mechanisms so that it is no longer required to tell `gv' or `ps2pdf'
  about the paper size.  The `broken' flag value 16 omits this feature
  (the used PostScript command `setpagedevice' is a LanguageLevel 2
  extension) -- if you intend to further process grops output to get
  an encapsulated PS (EPS) file you must also use this option.

I'm not sure why you don't get `setpagedevice' in your document.

> Now I try to convert my old troff files, and BP in grops' prologue
> does not have setpagedevice in it.

I don't think that `BP' is the right place.  For me, the paper size
and orientation is a global option.  TeX can't do that either, BTW.

>   <</PageSize ... would also allow the free mixing of land/port
> pages, not only all port or all land (using two versions of "bp").

Feel free to add macros which do that for you (using the \X'ps: ...'
escape).  I won't do that directly within groff.


    Werner