Re: [Groff] groff ms: Is there an order to setting PS and VS versus PO and LL

[Larry Kollar]

(Ted Harding) <address@hidden> wrote:

> The ms macros have a somewhat deeply hidden mechanism of
> storing the existing values of page-offset, line-length
> and the like which can cause the kind of effect that Dorai
> observes.
> 
> If I intend a non-default page offset (e.g. 0.75i) to be in
> force from the very start of the document, then I would use
> the two requests (in the order shown):
> 
> .po 0.75i
> .nr PO 0.75i
> 
> and make sure that they were placed before anything else
> which could trigger a "new page" set-up.

To further amplify on what Ted says here, if you set the registers on the 
command line, like this:

        groff -ms -r PO=0.75i -r LL=6.75i file >file.ps

Then the settings are in effect from the beginning. I often include a comment 
near the top of any *roff file with the expected command line options, for when 
I haven’t touched it in a week or more and forgot what I used.

— Larry