srh@docwrk.UUCP (Steven R. Houser) (06/02/89)
I have a couple of questions about nroff and the mm package: 1) Is there any way to keep nroff from printing an extra blank page at the end of the file? I imagine this feature was included in nroff with pin-feed printers in mind. With a cut-sheet feeder, it makes an extra sheet of blank paper come through, which is useless. Right now I output nroff to a text file and use vi to remove the blank lines at the end of the file. This is an extra step I'd like to avoid if possible. 2) Recently, for some reason, mm has been printing a blank page after EVERY page of text. I don't know what I did to make this happen; it didn't do this before. This happens regardless of how I set the .pl (page length). This is on a HPDeskJet. Has anyone else run into this problem? I'd appreciate any ideas. Please reply by E-mail, or post an article if you think these questions are universal enough. Steve -- ========================================================================== Steven R. Houser The Document Workshop | "Man is the only animal who srh@docwrk.UUCP CompuServe 71401,373 | laughs--or needs to." uunet!osu-cis!n8emr!uncle!oink!docwrk!srh | Mark Twain
psfales@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (Peter Fales) (06/03/89)
In article <38@docwrk.UUCP>, srh@docwrk.UUCP (Steven R. Houser) writes: > I have a couple of questions about nroff and the mm package: > > 1) Is there any way to keep nroff from printing an extra blank page at the > end of the file? I have used various flavors of nroff on various machines, and have never seen this happen. Are you sure that there is not something funny in your local configuration or mm macro file. > 2) Recently, for some reason, mm has been printing a blank page after EVERY > page of text. I don't know what I did to make this happen; it didn't > do this before. This happens regardless of how I set the .pl (page length). > This is on a HPDeskJet. Has anyone else run into this problem? This is just a guess, but the HP DeskJet has two output modes: text scale which gives you 66 lines/page, and unscaled which gives you 6 lines/inch, but slightly fewer than 66 lines (63?) due to top and bottom margins. If your printer suddenly started using unscaled output (set by a dip switch or escape sequence) and nroff were sending 66 lines (a few of which fall onto the next page), then a formfeed, it would explain what you are seeing. Like I said, this is just a guess, since I don't know where the formfeed would be coming from. -- Peter Fales AT&T, Room 5B-420 2000 N. Naperville Rd. UUCP: ...att!ihlpb!psfales Naperville, IL 60566 Domain: psfales@ihlpb.att.com work: (312) 979-8031
john@banzai.UUCP (John Canning) (06/04/89)
In article <38@docwrk.UUCP> srh@docwrk.UUCP (Steven R. Houser) writes: >I have a couple of questions about nroff and the mm package: > >1) Is there any way to keep nroff from printing an extra blank page at the > end of the file? > It sounds like you are sending things to the parallel printer port. The driver on the regular (or cooked) parallel port places a form feed at the end of the output automatically. nroff already spaces out to the end of the file (nroff doesn't believe in form feeds), so with the extra form feed from the driver, you get an extra sheet of paper. If you send things to /dev/rawlp instead of /dev/lp, then your extra sheet should go away. On our machines, we have moved lp to lp.cooked, and linked rawlp to lp. We do this by logging in as root and typing in the following: mv /dev/lp /dev/lp.cooked ln /dev/rawlp /dev/lp One other "feature" of the printer driver is that it truncates things after 120 characters. This "feature" was finally documented in the manuals in Unix V3.5. John Canning ...uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!john The People's Computer Company ...attmail!banzai!john Williston, Vermont 802-864-0747