[net.unix-wizards] nroff problem

miorelli (03/09/83)

I am having a small problem with nroff --

nroff -me file

causes an escape-9  ( ^[9 ) to be put at the beginning of two
lines near the bottom of the page.  Also, the page length seems
to be one too short for a standard printer.  This does not happen
if I do not use the -me option.  Please send help via mail.

Thanks.

-->BoB MIorelli, Pratt & Whitney Aircraft
decvax!harpo!utah-cs!utah-gr!pwa-b!miorelli

jfw (03/11/83)

Were it not for harpo, I would have asent mail.

nroff generates ESC-9's if it thinks you are on a DASI 300 terminal,
which is the default.

nroff -Tn300 $ARGS	is the best thing for garden variety terminals.

Read the N/TROFF document, first and second pages.

bb (03/11/83)

PLEASE!!  Let's get things straight.
Unless someone has sabotaged one of our NROFF/TROFF manuals, there is
a discrepancy here.  My manual (and my experience) says that the default
device is the Model 37 `tty'; the <ESC>9's are half-line vertical motions,
and can result without regard to macro pkg used if conditions are just so.

Also, the correct arg for vanilla devices is -Ttn300.

		"Read the N/TROFF document, first and second pages."

I agree, John.

				Brent Byer

iv (03/11/83)

Bob, (and the rest of the net) I'm sorry I had to post a follow-up article,
but the evil specre of harpo was in our news path to you, and our machine
does not know any of the machines listed after harpo.
Re:  Your nroff problem
What is happening is nroff is formatting the file for the terminal you are
currently on.  This is nice if you wish to view it (This is where the ESC
code is coming from).  To prevent this, do a 'nroff -me -tlpr <file>'.
The '-t' tells nroff what kind of terminal (I think that's what 't' stands
for) it is formatting for.  If you use -tlpr, then you will get printer
output from it instead of terminal output.
Does that answer your question?  Hope so.  "share and enjoy"!
					John Elliott IV
					laidbak!trsvax!iv  -or-
					microsoft!trsvax!iv