Re: Selecting Papersize

[Bjarni Ingi Gislason]

On Sun, Jul 09, 2023 at 10:56:25AM +1000, Damian McGuckin wrote:
> 
> When using the -dpaper=a4 option to 'groff' (which is passed to 'gtroff'),
> the manual says to use '-P-pa4' also (which is passed to the backend).
> 
> Does 'gtroff' not pass enough papersize information down its pipeline to the
> backend to make that '-P-pa4' redundant?
> 
> Thanks - Damian
> 

Mail sent to groff@gnu.org (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/groff))

Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2022 20:05:18 +0000
[...]
Subject: Re: [mmse] Adding a footnote yields a infinite loop.

On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 12:37:56PM +0100, hbezemer--- via wrote:
>[...]
> A4 is de facto the standard for all documents in Europe.
> (Since A4 and letter don't differ that much in size, I mostly use the
default although the documents get printed on A4 paper.)

  The default in "tmac/troffrc" is:

.\" Handle paper formats on typesetting devices.
.if t .do mso papersize.tmac

  Formatting with page format "letter" and printing on an A4 paper,
makes the footer too big (high, extra empty lines).

  When "groff" is configured, the variable "PAGE" is (should be) set to
the default paper format for the default printer.

  So the variable "paper" in "papersize.tmac" should have the same
value as "$PAGE".

  With, for example, this addition to "tmac/troffrc" before reading the
"papersize.tmac":

.if t \{\
.  do if !d paper .do ds paper A4\" use $(PAGE) to configure
.\}

See also bug #62238 (closed).

-.-.

Not in the mail:

Instead of $(PAGE), @PAGE@ could be the right text.

  The additional lines should be created when the software is compiled,
for example by adding a shell script "tmac/troffrc.in" which creates
"tmac/troffrc" through the Makefile (tmac/tmac.am) with the users
default paper size.