groff_ms (7) - Linux Manuals

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An Unnumbered Subheading

Highlighting

.B

[txt [post [pre]]] Sets its first argument in bold type. If you specify a second argument, groff prints it in the previous font after the bold text, with no intervening space (this allows you to set punctuation after the highlighted text without highlighting the punctuation). Similarly, it prints the third argument (if any) in the previous font before the first argument. For example,

.B foo ) (

prints "(foo)".

If you give this macro no arguments, groff prints all text following in bold until the next highlighting, paragraph, or heading macro.

.R

[txt [post [pre]]] Sets its first argument in roman (or regular) type. It operates similarly to the B macro otherwise.

.I

[txt [post [pre]]] Sets its first argument in italic type. It operates similarly to the B macro otherwise.

.CW

[txt [post [pre]]] Sets its first argument in a constant-width face. It operates similarly to the B macro otherwise.

.BI

[txt [post [pre]]] Sets its first argument in bold italic type. It operates similarly to the B macro otherwise.

.BX

[txt] Prints its argument and draws a box around it. If you want to box a string that contains spaces, use a digit-width space (\0).

.UL

[txt [post]] Prints its first argument with an underline. If you specify a second argument, groff prints it in the previous font after the underlined text, with no intervening space.

.LG

Prints all text following in larger type (2~points larger than the current point size) until the next font size, highlighting, paragraph, or heading macro. You can specify this macro multiple times to enlarge the point size as needed.

.SM

Prints all text following in smaller type (2~points smaller than the current point size) until the next type size, highlighting, paragraph, or heading macro. You can specify this macro multiple times to reduce the point size as needed.

.NL

Prints all text following in the normal point size (that is, the value of the PS register).

\*{text\*}

Print the enclosed text as a superscript.

Indents

Use the RS and RE macros to start and end a section of indented text, respectively. The PI register controls the amount of indent.

You can nest indented sections as deeply as needed by using multiple, nested pairs of RS and RE.

Lists

.IP

[marker [width]] The marker is usually a bullet character \(bu for unordered lists, a number (or auto-incrementing number register) for numbered lists, or a word or phrase for indented (glossary-style) lists.

The width specifies the indent for the body of each list item. Once specified, the indent remains the same for all list items in the document until specified again.

Tab stops

Displays and keeps

Display macro		Type of display
With keep	No keep
.DS L	.LD	Left-justified.
.DS I [,indent/]	.ID	Indented (default indent in the DI register).
.DS B	.BD	Block-centered (left-justified, longest line centered).
.DS C	.CD	Centered.
.DS R	.RD	Right-justified.

Use the DE macro to end any display type. The macros Ds and De were formerly provided as aliases for DS and DE, respectively, but they have been removed, and should no longer be used. X11 documents which actually use Ds and De always load a specific macro file from the X11 distribution (macros.t) which provides proper definitions for the two macros.

To keep text together on a page, such as a paragraph that refers to a table (or list, or other item) immediately following, use the KS and KE macros. The KS macro begins a block of text to be kept on a single page, and the KE macro ends the block.

You can specify a floating keep using the KF and KE macros. If the keep cannot fit on the current page, groff holds the contents of the keep and allows text following the keep (in the source file) to fill in the remainder of the current page. When the page breaks, whether by an explicit bp request or by reaching the end of the page, groff prints the floating keep at the top of the new page. This is useful for printing large graphics or tables that do not need to appear exactly where specified.

The macros B1 and B2 can be used to enclose a text within a box; .B1 begins the box, and .B2 ends it. Text in the box is automatically placed in a diversion (keep).

Tables, figures, equations, and references

.TS [H] and .TE

Denote a table to be processed by the tbl preprocessor. The optional H~argument instructs groff to create a running header with the information up to the TH macro. Groff prints the header at the beginning of the table; if the table runs onto another page, groff prints the header on the next page as well.

.PS and .PE

Denote a graphic to be processed by the pic preprocessor. You can create a pic file by hand, using the AT&T pic manual available on the Web as a reference, or by using a graphics program such as xfig.

.EQ

[align] and .EN Denote an equation to be processed by the eqn preprocessor. The optional align argument can be C, L, or~I to center (the default), left-justify, or indent the equation, respectively.

.[ and .]

Denote a reference to be processed by the refer preprocessor. The GNU refer(1) manual page provides a comprehensive reference to the preprocessor and the format of the bibliographic database.

Footnotes

You can specify symbolic footnotes by placing the mark character (such as \(dg for the dagger character) in the body text, followed by the text of the footnote enclosed by FS \(dg and FE macros.

You can control how groff prints footnote numbers by changing the value of the FF register as follows:

0

Prints the footnote number as a superscript; indents the footnote (default).

1

Prints the number followed by a period (that is,~"1.") and indents the footnote.

2

Like~1, without an indent.

3

Like~1, but prints the footnote number as a paragraph with a hanging indent.

You can use footnotes safely within keeps and displays, but avoid using numbered footnotes within floating keeps. You can set a second \** between a \** and its corresponding .FS; as long as each .FS occurs after the corresponding \** and the occurrences of .FS are in the same order as the corresponding occurrences of \**.

Headers and footers

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Use the strings LH, CH, and RH to set the left, center, and right headers. Use LF, CF, and RF to set the left, center, and right footers. The string-setting approach works best for documents that do not distinguish between odd and even pages.

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Use the OH and EH macros to define headers for the odd and even pages, and OF and EF macros to define footers for the odd and even pages. This is more flexible than defining the individual strings. The syntax for these macros is as follows:

.XX 'left'center'right'

where XX is one of the foregoing four macros and each of left, center, and right is text of your choice. You can replace the quote (') marks with any character not appearing in the header or footer text.

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You can redefine the PT and BT macros to change the behavior of the header and footer, respectively. The header process also calls the (undefined) HD macro after PT; you can define this macro if you need additional processing after printing the header (for example, to draw a line below the header).

Margins

Reg.	Definition	Effective	Default
PO	Page offset (left margin)	next page	1i
LL	Line length	next paragraph	6i
LT	Header/footer length	next paragraph	6i
HM	Top (header) margin	next page	1i
FM	Bottom (footer) margin	next page	1i

Note that there is no right margin setting. The combination of page offset and line length provide the information necessary to derive the right margin.

Multiple columns

.1C

Single-column mode.

.2C

Two-column mode.

.MC

[column-width [gutter-width]] Multi-column mode. If you specify no arguments, it is equivalent to the 2C macro. Otherwise, column-width is the width of each column and gutter-width is the space between columns. The MINGW number register is the default gutter width.

Creating a table of contents

You can manually create a table of contents by specifying a page number as the first argument to XS. Add subsequent entries using the XA macro. For example:

.XS 1
Introduction
.XA 2
A Brief History of the Universe
.XA 729
Details of Galactic Formation
...
.XE

Use the PX macro to print a manually-generated table of contents without resetting the page number.

If you give the argument no to either PX or TC, groff suppresses printing the title specified by the \*[TOC] string.

Fractional point sizes

The following four registers accept fractional point sizes: PS, VS, FPS, and FVS.

Due to backwards compatibility, the value of VS must be smaller than 40000 (this is 40.0 points).

DIFFERENCES FROM troff ms

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The internals of groff ms differ from the internals of Unix ms. Documents that depend upon implementation details of Unix ms may not format properly with groff ms.

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The error-handling policy of groff ms is to detect and report errors, rather than silently to ignore them.

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Some Bell Labs localisms are not implemented by default. However, if you call the otherwise undocumented SC section-header macro, you will enable implementations of three other archaic Bell Labs macros: UC, P1, and P2. These are not enabled by default because (a)~they were not documented, in the original ms manual, and (b)~the P1 and UC macros both collide with different macros in the Berkeley version of ms.

These emulations are sufficient to give back the 1976 Kernighan~& Cherry paper Typesetting Mathematics - User's Guide its section headings, and restore some text that had gone missing as arguments of undefined macros. No warranty express or implied is given as to how well the typographic details these produce match the original Bell Labs macros.

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Berkeley localisms, in particular the TM and CT macros, are not implemented.

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Groff ms does not work in compatibility mode (e.g., with the -C option).

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There is no support for typewriter-like devices.

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Groff ms does not provide cut marks.

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Multiple line spacing is not supported (use a larger vertical spacing instead).

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Some Unix ms documentation says that the CW and GW number registers can be used to control the column width and gutter width, respectively. These number registers are not used in groff ms.

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Macros that cause a reset (paragraphs, headings, etc.) may change the indent. Macros that change the indent do not increment or decrement the indent, but rather set it absolutely. This can cause problems for documents that define additional macros of their own. The solution is to use not the in request but instead the RS and RE macros.

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The number register GS is set to~1 by the groff ms macros, but is not used by the Unix ms macros. Documents that need to determine whether they are being formatted with Unix ms or groff ms should use this number register.

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To make groff ms use the default page offset (which also specifies the left margin), the PO number register must stay undefined until the first ms macro is evaluated. This implies that PO should not be used early in the document, unless it is changed also: remember that accessing an undefined register automatically defines it.

Strings

String	Default Value
REFERENCES	References
ABSTRACT	ABSTRACT
TOC	Table of Contents
MONTH1	January
MONTH2	February
MONTH3	March
MONTH4	April
MONTH5	May
MONTH6	June
MONTH7	July
MONTH8	August
MONTH9	September
MONTH10	October
MONTH11	November
MONTH12	December

The \*- string produces an em dash---like this.

Use \*Q and \*U to get a left and right typographer's quote, respectively, in troff (and plain quotes in nroff).

Text Settings

The point size, vertical spacing, and inter-paragraph spacing for footnotes are controlled by the number registers FPS, FVS, and FPD; at initialization these are set to \n(PS-2, \n[FPS]+2, and \n(PD/2, respectively. If any of these registers are defined before initialization, the initialization macro does not change them.

The hyphenation flags (as set by the hy request) are set from the HY register; the default is~6.

Improved accent marks (as originally defined in Berkeley's ms version) are available by specifying the AM macro at the beginning of your document. You can place an accent over most characters by specifying the string defining the accent directly after the character. For example, n\*~ produces an n with a tilde over it.

NAMING CONVENTIONS

Internally the macros are divided into modules; naming conventions are as follows:

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Names used only within one module are of the form module*name.

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Names used outside the module in which they are defined are of the form module@name.

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Names associated with a particular environment are of the form environment:name; these are used only within the par module.

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name does not have a module prefix.

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Constructed names used to implement arrays are of the form array!index.

Thus the groff ms macros reserve the following names:

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Names containing the characters *, @, and~:.

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Names containing only uppercase letters and digits.

FILES

AUTHORS