Re: [Groff] Setting different page lengths for troff and nroff

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday, 30 May 2006 at 21:55:45 -0600, Clarke Echols wrote:
> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>> I have a design document that I need to output in two forms: as a
>> properly typeset PostScript file (troff) and in plain text (nroff).  I
>> want the latter not to have page breaks.  I've tried a number of
>> things, but I have two problems:
>>
>> 1.  I can't find a number register than I can tweak to change the page
>>    height.  The ones I find are read-only and can only be set from
>>    the command line.
>>
>> 2.  The document contains footnotes.  If I do set a large page size
>>    from the command line, I have to guess it exactly, or I end up
>>    with a footnote separated from the rest of the document by a lot
>>    of white space.
>>
>> Any ideas?  I'm looking for a solution to my original problem, but it
>> would also be nice to know how to reset page height from within a
>> document.
>
> Have you tried ".ifn" and ".ift" (if nroff and if troff)?

Yes, though I write it '.if t' and '.if n'.  '.ifn' doesn't work;
possibly this is a contracted form that no longer works.

> as in:
>
> .ift .pl 11i
> .ifn .pl [something else]

Doh!  I forgot about the .pl request.  Unfortunately, it doesn't help.
It sets the page length accordingly, but the text is still the same
length, so the effect is overly long bottom margins.

Greg
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