RE: [Groff] Underlining wierdness question

[Ted Harding]

On 15-Mar-08 22:27:44, Clarke Echols wrote:
> I'm working on a document with a headline:
> 
>      Are You Sure You're Getting Maximum Value
> 
> where the line is set in Helvetica bold with "Sure" set in
> HB italic.  I want to underline the word "Sure", but I'm getting
> strange behavior from what I thought should be a legitimate approach.
> 
> Conditions are:
>     .ll 6.5i
>     .ps 12
>     .vs 14
> 
> My strategy was to set the font to HB, set the first two words, then
> switch to HBI for word "Sure".  After setting that word and going
> back to HB, I then do a horizontal move left 0.55i, move down
> 2.5p, use \D escape to draw a line with thickness 2000 units, .55i
> in length, back up 2.5p, and do the rest of the line.
> 
> But I get a strange behavior.  groff draws the line as I want,
> but it somehow injects a line about 30 points long (.41 inch long),
> even if I disable the line drawing \D escape sequence.
> 
> The first line below is what I used to kill the line draw, but
> it still gives a short line.  The second line gives me what I want,
> but I still have the short line and don't have a clue what's causing
> it.  I'm running groff 1.18.1 under cygwin.  The two lines lie directly
> one on top of the other.
> 
> [EOL] is a space character in each line that was followed with an
> end-of-line for the email program to keep the lines readable.  In the
> actual file, it's all one line with the same characters except [EOL].
> 
>  > .ce1
>  > \s+6\f(HBAre You \f[HBI]Sure\fP\h'-0.55i'\v'2.5p'\D't [EOL]
>  > 2000'\h'.55i'\v'-2.5p' You're Getting Maximum Value
> 
>  > .ce 1
>  > \s+6\f(HBAre You \f[HBI]Sure\fP\h'-0.55i'\v'2.5p'\D't [EOL]
>  > 2000'\D'l .55i 0'\v'-2.5p' You're Getting Maximum Value
> 
> Do any of you groff geniuses have a clue about what's going on
> here?  I don't see what could be causing it.  I can live with
> what I have, but I'd rather drop the line 3p instead of 2.5
> which is where groff puts it, no matter what the \v escape
> tells it to do.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Clarke

Hi Clarke,
I'm not seeing anything untoward (groff-1.18.1) in either you
first or your second example. The first shows no line, and the
secind shows a clean line.

The only thing I'd say is that in the second example the line
is neither quite nicely positioned, nor wuite the right length.

One point to watch for: The \D't 2000' will generate a horiontal
movement of 2000u (2p). I prefer to wrap things in \Z'...',
and also to use the \w'...' escape, when doing this sort of thing.

In the case of your example:

.ce 1
\s+6\f(HBAre You \
\Z'\D't 2000''\
\Z'\v'2.5p'\D'l \w'\f[HBI]Sure\fP'u 0'\v'-2.5p''\
\f[HBI]Sure\fP You're Getting Maximum Value\s0

[note the "\" to enable line-continuation] looks fine to me!

Though I might prefer to move the line slightly to the right:

.ce 1
\s+6\f(HBAre You \
\Z'\D't 2000''\
\Z'\v'2.5p'\h'1p'\D'l \w'\f[HBI]Sure\fP'u 0'\v'-2.5p''\
\f[HBI]Sure\fP You're Getting Maximum Value\s0

Best wishes,
Ted.

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Date: 15-Mar-08                                       Time: 23:13:17
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