Re: [Groff] Suppressing final page break

[Clarke Echols]

On 02/05/2014 09:10 PM, Austin wrote:
> Hope you'll forgive my first post being a dumb newbie question ... I have
> searched for an answer with no luck so far.
>
> I have a pair of macros that collect text and format it, then output one chunk
> per page, for printing envelopes, labels, etc.  I'm looking for a more elegant
> way of suppressing the final page break to avoid an empty page at the end of
> the document.  Currently I set a 'first time through' flag and then output the
> page break depending on its value, but this seems slightly kludgy.  Is there
> perhaps a way of making the .bp 'conditional', i.e. only actioned if there is
> text following it?  Or perhaps a way to 'suck it back' in an end-of-input
> macro?  What's the preferred approach (if there is one)?

I usually print files with embedded .bp requests and make sure I have
no empty lines at the end of the file.

The .em request is provided to handle end-of-input conditions, but
that's usually to set up signature/approval blocks after everything
else is finished printing.

This might work:
  1. Set a flag to indicate start of job to prevent an initial .bp

  2. Have the first macro on the first entry emit a .bp before
     producing any other output, then clear the flag for subsequent
     passes/pages.

  3. The last page input starts with a page break, but when there's no
     more input, the first macro isn't entered, and thus suppresses
     the page break.

That should do it.