Re: groff_mm : problems with .DS

[Anton Shepelev]

Damian McGuckin:

> I went back to a very old document using troff and
> MM.  It is a tutorial on using troff at the  macro
> package  level  without needing to know much about
> the low level troff. I was contemplating  updating
> it and putting it out there.
>
> I  am  trying  to use a display with fill mode on,
> i.e.
>
>    .DS 1 1
>
> The left margin is indented slightly. Unfortunate-
> ly,  the  right  margin  is not shrunk by the same
> amount with groff_mm.
>
> I know that the original  MM  package  handled  it
> flawlessly.
>
> Does  anybody  have a fix for this or do I need to
> sort out the bug?

It did this for me in Groff. I have always specified
the `rindent' paramenter, i.e.:

   .DS I F \n[Si]

where  `Si' is an MM register storing the left shift
indent.  The invocation above produces the following
text:

   Thou  art  nothing. And all thy desires and memo-
   ries and loves and dreams,  nothing.  The  little
   dead earth-louse were of greater avail than thou,
   were it not nothing as thou art nothing. For  all
   is  nothing:  earth and sky and sea and they that
   dwell therein. Nor shall  this  illusion  comfort
   thee,  if  it might, that when thou art abolished
   these things shall endure for a season, stars and
   months  return, and men grow old and die, and new
   men and women live and love and die and  be  for-
   gotten.  For what is it to thee, that shalt be as
   a blown-out flame? and all things  in  earth  and
   heaven,  and  things past and things for to come,
   and life and death,  and  the  mere  elements  of
   space and time, of being and not being, all shall
   be nothing unto thee; because thou shalt be noth-
   ing, for ever.