Re: [groff] a5 paper size?

[John Gardner]

Hi Ricky,

Try passing the paper-size option directly to Groff:

groff -Tpdf *-P-l* …


See groff(1), "USING GROFF" for more information on specifying paper-size.

The "\X'papersize=…'" mechanism is designed for documents where certain
pages have different dimensions to others. E.g., a PDF whose first 5 pages
are A4, sixth page is A3, and all remaining pages are A5, etc. Rarely will
you ever need to generate PDFs with pages of varying sizes.



On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 at 08:27, Richard Morse <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi! I apologize if this is the wrong list for this question; if there is a
> better place to ask it, please let me know.
>
> It seems from the manual* that I should be able to create an A5-sized PDF
> by doing something like:
>
>     \X'papersize=a5'
>     .pl 8.26i
>     This is a test
>
> and then calling
>
>     groff -Tpdf foo.tr > foo.pdf
>
> However, when I try this, I get the errors:
>
>     Use of uninitialized value $val in pattern match (m//) at
> /usr/local/Cellar/groff/1.22.3/bin/gropdf line 1158, <> line 15.
>     Use of uninitialized value $mediabox[3] in subtraction (-) at
> /usr/local/Cellar/groff/1.22.3/bin/gropdf line 1858, <> line 16.
>     Use of uninitialized value $fld in concatenation (.) or string at
> /usr/local/Cellar/groff/1.22.3/bin/gropdf line 1923, <> line 26.
>
> (This happens regardless of whether I say "a5" or "A5".) What am I doing
> wrong?
>
> Thanks,
> Ricky
>
> * `man gropdf` says that the "\X'papersize=paper-size'" parameter is
> supported, and is the same as the "papersize" command, and directs me to
> `man groff_font`. `man groff_font` says that "papersize" selects a paper
> size: "Valid values for string are the ISO paper types A0-A7 ... Case is
> not significant for string if it holds predefined paper sizes."
>
>
>