[net.text] .nr LL <value> vs. .ll <value>

david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) (01/24/85)

In article <2150@usceast.UUCP> ted@usceast.UUCP (Ted Nolan) writes:
>In article <409@mcvax.UUCP> jaap@mcvax.UUCP (Jaap Akkerhuis) writes:
>>In article <199@usl.UUCP> sigma@usl.UUCP (Spyridon Triantafyllopoulos) writes:
>>
>>	[Original question deleted due to space]
>>
>>Looks like a nice entry. Why don't you read the manual? Although it
>>might look a bit obscure in the N/Troff manual, you would have found
>>out that the .nr request will take default values as units.
>>Guessing that you want to change the line length to 7.5 Pica's,
>>you should have said:
>>	.nr LL 7.5P
>
>This isn't quite fair, the documentation for nroff and -ms is spread out
>in too many places and is not generally kept online under the man command
>anyway (except for ms(7) and nroff(1) (which may fall under roff(1) in v7)
>and are not too helpful)
>
>I think probably what is needed is to set the line length to 7.5 inches
>	.nr LL 7.5i
>should do this, but my documentation warns that it will not take effect until
>the next paragraph, if you need it right away, you should follow the above by
>	.ll 7.5i
>
>I think this will work.

Actually .ll is NOT on the list of nroff commands that work with -ms.
So it won't work.  What will happen is that the next PARAGRAPH will have
that page width set, and the rest of the document will have the default.
(BTW, 4.2 comes with a manual page for -ms which is very convenient to
have on line, no need to run for a manual when you try to remember
what a command is or what the arguments are....)

You're right about the documentation being scattered all over the place.
Hopefully the documentation that comes with DITROFF will be better arranged.
(I assume it will since Kernighan probably wrote it...)

:-) How come the only readable CS texts I've read were written by Kernighan?
-:--:-
David Herron;  ARPA-> "ukma!david"@ANL-MCS or david%ukma.uucp@anl-mcs.arpa
(Note the quotes on the first.  Try the second please.)

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