Re: [Groff] The Nature of .ev

[Yves Cloutier]

Ralph, Ingo, thank you for your explanation.

Yes in fact what I was trying to do was see if there was a way of doing
something like HTML <div> or <span>.

I was hoping there was a way of doing that, but it looks like I will have
to do it manually.

Thanks again,

yves

On Sun, Feb 1, 2015 at 9:43 AM, Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden>
wrote:

> Hi Yves,
>
> Ingo wrote:
> > > I am trying to get to grips with how environments work.  For example
> > > what I'm trying to do is start a new environment, apply some
> > > formatting, then return to the previous environment:
> >
> > As far as i understand, environments are not the intended tool for
> > temporary formatting changes: They deal only half-way with partially
> > filled lines, saving and discarding them, but providing no support for
> > printing them.
>
> Ingo's right.  They're not a way of having font settings to hand so you
> can switch to a group of attributes in one go, as if putting an HTML
> <span> in a particular CSS class.  They're intended more for printing a
> page's footer when the trap is triggered at the bottom of the page's
> text without having to save and restore the text's styling at that
> point, whatever it may be.  Ditto the next page's header.
>
> The Troff User's Manual, CSTR 54, uses them in its tutorial for the
> footer macro.  http://troff.org/54.pdf
>
> Cheers, Ralph.
>