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


From: Clarke Echols
Subject: Re: [Groff] Setting different page lengths for troff and nroff
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 23:19:05 -0600
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (Windows/20060308)



Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
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.

If you use .wh -1.5i for example, it should set a trap relative
to the current value set by the .pl request.  You then use that
to handle end-of-page conditions before using the 'bp or .bp
request to eject the new page according to nroff/troff page length.
This should work for normal text, but if you're using diversions for
footnotes, that's a different matter.  I managed to typeset a book
(for a friend) that's coming out in a few weeks that contains a lot
of footnotes, but I didn't have any nroff/troff issues, so I'm nowhere
near being any sort of expert here...  I'm just drawing from a faded
distant memory of over a decade ago.

Clarke

Greg
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