[comp.mail.mush] nroff trouble Re: Announcing: Mush 7.0

kevin@kosman.UUCP (Kevin O'Gorman) (12/16/89)

Just a nit, folks, but if you're stuck with nroff like me, your pages are
going to get a bit ragged because there are a few bits of text that don't
stay between the lines.  I'm not sure how to fix some of these, so here
they are the way they appear in mush.1:

: alts island maui molokai ceylon !cory.berkeley.edu!dheller !root
: \+<num>	keep only the first <num> messages matched (head).
: \-<num>	keep only the last <num> messages matched (tail).
: set autosign2 = \*Q!island @berkeley.edu @mit.edu *schaefer root: \--dan\*U

They go beyong 80 columns, and if your printer starts a new line for them,
the top-of-page may get messed up because there are no form-feeds in nroff
output.  Or at least not in MY nroff output.

Actually, in my case, I have software that folds the lines automatically
because I have a wide-carriage printer that I almost always load with
narrow paper.  This scheme works well for everything except nroff.

In other cases, your printer may just go ahead and print, and the results
will depend on the size of paper you use and whether you remove the perfs.

Anyway, I'm posting this so you can fix it before you print the 80 pages,
and so the authors can find a way to fix these lines.

schaefer@ogicse.ogc.edu (Barton E. Schaefer) (12/17/89)

In article <1051@kosman.UUCP> kevin@kosman.UUCP (Root) writes:
} 
} : alts island maui molokai ceylon !cory.berkeley.edu!dheller !root
} : \+<num>	keep only the first <num> messages matched (head).
} : \-<num>	keep only the last <num> messages matched (tail).
} : set autosign2 = \*Q!island @berkeley.edu @mit.edu *schaefer root: \--dan\*U
} 
} [These] go beyong 80 columns, and if your printer starts a new line for them,
} the top-of-page may get messed up because there are no form-feeds in nroff
} output.  Or at least not in MY nroff output.

Of these 4 lines, the only one that exceeds 80 columns in my nroff is the
last one (which I have just shortened by replacing "berkeley.edu" with
"sun.com" both there and in the discussion that follows it).  The others run
75 to 78 columns.

All of these lines occur in indented or titled paragraphs (-man macros' .IP
or .TP directives), so I suggest you check what default indentations your
-man macros use.  On Berkeley-derived systems, at least, you can change
the indentation by resetting the )R number register (yes, open-paren R).
-- 
Bart Schaefer     "Miserable miscreant!  Question MY integrity, will you?"
               "I have to see some *evidence* of it before I can question it."
                                                            -- Calvin & Hobbes
schaefer@cse.ogi.edu (used to be cse.ogc.edu)