MPM(6)

NAME

mpm, mspe − macros for page makeup

SYNOPSIS

troff -mpm file ...

troff -mspe file ...

DESCRIPTION

These troff(1) macros, largely compatible with ms(6), make better pages. They silently invoke and provide information to a postprocessor that moves floating figures, avoids widows, and justifies pages vertically by stretching vertical spaces that result from .PP, .LP, .IP, .QP, .SH, .NH, .DS/.DE, .EQ/.EN, .TS/.TE, .PS/.PE, .P1/.P2, and .QS/.QE. The packages support different styles:

-mpm generic

-mspe Software—Practice and Experience

The following macros are different from or not part of -ms. Values denoted n have default value 1v.

.BP Begin a new page.

.FL Flush: force out previous keeps.

.FC Finish a two-column region and start a new one.

.KF m Floating keep, with preferred center at vertical position m. Special values top (default) and bottom are permitted.

.NE n Start new page if remaining vertical space on this page is less than n.

.P1 Begin a program display (constant width font).

.P2 End a program display.

.P3 Insert optional break point in program display.

.SP n exactly

.SP n Insert vertical space of height n, stretchable unless exactly is present.

.Tm text Place page number and text on the standard error output.

.X text Present text to the hidden page-makeup program as part of a device-dependent output sequence x X text. Equivalent to \X’text’.

Useful number registers:

HM Header margin; default 1 inch.

FM Footer margin; default 1 inch.

FO Footer position; default 10 inches.

%# Page number of current page.

dP,dV Shrinkage of point size and vertical spacing for .P1, in points.

Useful strings:

%e,%o Even and odd page title commands, as .tl .

FILES

/sys/lib/tmac/tmac.pm
/$cputype/bin/aux/pm

SOURCE

/sys/src/cmd/pm

BUGS

These features of -ms are missing:

Document styles other than the default .RP.
Space between front matter and first paragraph. Recover it with .SP 2.
Separating rule above footnotes.
Keeps assigned to a separate page.
Pages with more than two columns.

Troff option -o doesn’t work with -mpm because only the postprocessor knows the page numbers.

Plan 9 — April 04, 1995

Museum

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