groff_ms - GNU roff manuscript macro package for formatting documents
[
option ...] [
input-file ...] [
option ...]
[
input-file ...]
This manual page describes the GNU version of the
ms macros, part of the
groff typesetting system. The
ms macros are mostly compatible
with the documented behavior of the 4.3 BSD Unix
ms macros (see
Differences from troff ms below for details). The
ms macros are
suitable for reports, letters, books, and technical documentation.
The
ms macro package expects files to have a certain amount of structure.
The simplest documents can begin with a paragraph macro and consist of text
separated by paragraph macros or even blank lines. Longer documents have a
structure as follows:
- Document type
- If you use the RP (report) macro at the beginning of
the document, groff prints the cover page information on its own
page; otherwise it prints the information on the first page with your
document text immediately following. Other document formats found in
AT&T troff are specific to AT&T or Berkeley, and are not
supported in groff ms.
- Format and layout
- By setting number registers, you can change your document's
margins, spacing, headers and footers, footnotes, and the base point size
for the text. See Document control registers below for more
details.
- Cover page
- A cover page consists of a title, and optionally the
author's name and institution, an abstract, and the date. See Cover
page macros below for more details.
- Body
- Following the cover page is your document. It consists of
paragraphs, headings, and lists.
- Table of contents
- Longer documents usually include a table of contents, which
you can add by placing the TC macro at the end of your
document.
The following table lists the document control number registers. For the sake of
consistency, set registers related to margins at the beginning of your
document, or just after the
RP macro.
Margin settings
Reg. |
Definition |
Effective |
Default |
|
PO |
Page offset (left margin) |
next page |
1i |
LL |
Line length |
next paragraph |
6i |
LT |
Header/footer length |
next paragraph |
6i |
HM |
Top (header) margin |
next page |
1i |
FM |
Bottom (footer) margin |
next page |
1i |
|
Text settings
Reg. |
Definition |
Effective |
Default |
|
PS |
Point size |
next paragraph |
10p |
VS |
Line spacing (leading) |
next paragraph |
12p |
PSINCR |
Point size increment for section headings of increasing importance |
next heading |
1p |
GROWPS |
Heading level beyond which PSINCR is ignored |
next heading |
0 |
|
Paragraph settings
Reg. |
Definition |
Effective |
Default |
|
PI |
Initial indent |
next paragraph |
5n |
PD |
Space between paragraphs |
next paragraph |
0.3v |
QI |
Quoted paragraph indent |
next paragraph |
5n |
PORPHANS |
Number of initial lines to be kept together |
next paragraph |
1 |
HORPHANS |
Number of initial lines to be kept with heading |
next heading |
1 |
|
Footnote settings
Reg. |
Definition |
Effective |
Default |
|
FL |
Footnote length |
next footnote |
\n[LL]*5/6 |
FI |
Footnote indent |
next footnote |
2n |
FF |
Footnote format |
next footnote |
0 |
FPS |
Point size |
next footnote |
\n[PS]-2 |
FVS |
Vert. spacing |
next footnote |
\n[FPS]+2 |
FPD |
Para. spacing |
next footnote |
\n[PD]/2 |
|
Other settings
Reg. |
Definition |
Effective |
Default |
|
DD |
Display, table, eqn, pic spacing |
next para. |
0.5v |
MINGW |
Minimum width between columns |
next page |
2n |
|
Use the following macros to create a cover page for your document in the order
shown.
-
.RP [no]
- Specifies the report format for your document. The report
format creates a separate cover page. With no RP macro,
groff prints a subset of the cover page on page 1 of your
document.
- If you use the optional no argument, groff
prints a title page but does not repeat any of the title page information
(title, author, abstract, etc.) on page 1 of the document.
- .P1
- (P-one) Prints the header on page 1. The default is
to suppress the header.
-
.DA [xxx]
- (optional) Print the current date, or the arguments to the
macro if any, on the title page (if specified) and in the footers. This is
the default for nroff.
-
.ND [xxx]
- (optional) Print the current date, or the arguments to the
macro if any, on the title page (if specified) but not in the footers.
This is the default for troff.
- .TL
- Specifies the document title. Groff collects text
following the TL macro into the title, until reaching the author
name or abstract.
- .AU
- Specifies the author's name. You can specify multiple
authors by using an AU macro for each author.
- .AI
- Specifies the author's institution. You can specify
multiple institutions.
-
.AB [no]
- Begins the abstract. The default is to print the word
ABSTRACT, centered and in italics, above the text of the abstract.
The option no suppresses this heading.
- .AE
- End the abstract.
Use the
PP macro to create indented paragraphs, and the
LP macro
to create paragraphs with no initial indent.
The
QP macro indents all text at both left and right margins by the
amount of the register
QI. The effect is reminiscent of the HTML
<BLOCKQUOTE> tag. The next paragraph or heading returns the
margins to normal.
QP inserts the vertical space specified in register
PD as inter-paragraph spacing.
A paragraph bracketed between the macros
QS and
QE has the same
appearance as a paragraph started with
QP and a following paragraph
started with
LP. Both
QS and
QE insert the
inter-paragraph spacing specified in
PD and the text is indented on
both sides by the amount of register
QI. The text between
QS and
QE can be split into further paragraphs by using
.LP or
.PP.
The
XP macro produces an “exdented” paragraph; that is, one
with a hanging indent. The first line of the paragraph begins at the left
margin, and subsequent lines are indented (the opposite of
PP).
For each of the above paragraph types, and also for any list entry introduced by
the
IP macro (described later), the document control register
PORPHANS, sets the
minimum number of lines which must be
printed, after the start of the paragraph, and before any page break occurs.
If there is insufficient space remaining on the current page to accommodate
this number of lines, then a page break is forced
before the first line
of the paragraph is printed.
Similarly, when a section heading (see subsection “Headings”
below) precedes any of these paragraph types, the
HORPHANS document
control register specifies the
minimum number of lines of the paragraph
which must be kept on the same page as the heading. If insufficient space
remains on the current page to accommodate the heading and this number of
lines of paragraph text, then a page break is forced
before the heading
is printed.
Use headings to create a hierarchical structure for your document. By default,
the
ms macros print headings in
bold using the same font family
and point size as the body text. For output devices which support scalable
fonts, this behaviour may be modified by defining the document control
registers
GROWPS and
PSINCR.
The following heading macros are available:
-
.NH xx
- Numbered heading. The argument xx is either a
numeric argument to indicate the level of the heading, or
S xx xx ... to set the section number
explicitly. If you specify heading levels out of sequence, such as
invoking .NH 3 after .NH 1, groff
prints a warning on standard error.
- If the GROWPS register is set to a value greater
than the level of the heading, then the point size of the heading will be
increased by PSINCR units over the text size specified by the
PS register, for each level by which the heading level is less than
the value of GROWPS. For example, the sequence:
-
.nr PS 10
.nr GROWPS 3
.nr PSINCR 1.5p
.
.NH 1
Top Level Heading
.
.NH 2
Second Level Heading
.
.NH 3
Third Level Heading
- will cause
“1. Top Level Heading” to be
printed in 13pt bold text, followed by
“1.1. Second Level Heading” in
11.5pt bold text, while
“1.1.1. Third Level Heading”,
and all more deeply nested heading levels, will remain in the 10pt
bold text which is specified by the PS register.
- Note that the value stored in PSINCR is interpreted
in groff basic units; the p scaling factor should be
employed when assigning a value specified in points.
- The style used to represent the section number, within a
numbered heading, is controlled by the SN-STYLE string; this may be
set to either the SN-DOT or the SN-NO-DOT style, (described
below), by aliasing SN-STYLE accordingly. By default,
SN-STYLE is initialised by defining the alias
- it may be changed to the SN-NO-DOT style, if
preferred, by defining the alternative alias
- Any such change becomes effective with the first use of
.NH, after the new alias is defined.
- After invoking .NH, the assigned heading number is
available in the strings SN-DOT (as it appears in the default
formatting style for numbered headings, with a terminating period
following the number), and SN-NO-DOT (with this terminating period
omitted). The string SN is also defined, as an alias for
SN-DOT; if preferred, the user may redefine it as an alias for
SN-NO-DOT, by including the initialisation:
- at any time; the change becomes effective with the next use
of .NH, after the new alias is defined.
-
.SH [xx]
- Unnumbered subheading. The use of the optional xx
argument is a GNU extension, which adjusts the point size of the
unnumbered subheading to match that of a numbered heading, introduced
using .NH xx with the same value of xx. For
example, given the same settings for PS, GROWPS and
PSINCR, as used in the preceding .NH example, the
sequence:
-
.SH 2
An Unnumbered Subheading
- will print “An Unnumbered Subheading”
in 11.5pt bold text.
The
ms macros provide a variety of methods to highlight or emphasize
text:
-
.B [txt [post [pre]]]
- Sets its first argument in bold type. If you specify
a second argument, groff prints it in the previous font after the
bold text, with no intervening space (this allows you to set punctuation
after the highlighted text without highlighting the punctuation).
Similarly, it prints the third argument (if any) in the previous font
before the first argument. For example,
- prints “(foo)”.
- If you give this macro no arguments, groff prints
all text following in bold until the next highlighting, paragraph, or
heading macro.
-
.R [txt [post [pre]]]
- Sets its first argument in roman (or regular) type. It
operates similarly to the B macro otherwise.
-
.I [txt [post [pre]]]
- Sets its first argument in italic type. It operates
similarly to the B macro otherwise.
-
.CW [txt [post [pre]]]
- Sets its first argument in a constant-width face. It
operates similarly to the B macro otherwise.
-
.BI [txt [post [pre]]]
- Sets its first argument in bold italic type. It operates
similarly to the B macro otherwise.
-
.BX [txt]
- Prints its argument and draws a box around it. If you want
to box a string that contains spaces, use a digit-width space (\0).
-
.UL [txt [post]]
- Prints its first argument with an underline. If you specify
a second argument, groff prints it in the previous font after the
underlined text, with no intervening space.
- .LG
- Prints all text following in larger type (2 points
larger than the current point size) until the next font size,
highlighting, paragraph, or heading macro. You can specify this macro
multiple times to enlarge the point size as needed.
- .SM
- Prints all text following in smaller type (2 points
smaller than the current point size) until the next type size,
highlighting, paragraph, or heading macro. You can specify this macro
multiple times to reduce the point size as needed.
- .NL
- Prints all text following in the normal point size (that
is, the value of the PS register).
-
\*{text\*}
- Print the enclosed text as a superscript.
You may need to indent sections of text. A typical use for indents is to create
nested lists and sublists.
Use the
RS and
RE macros to start and end a section of indented
text, respectively. The
PI register controls the amount of indent.
You can nest indented sections as deeply as needed by using multiple, nested
pairs of
RS and
RE.
The
IP macro handles duties for all lists. Its syntax is as follows:
-
.IP [marker [width]]
- The marker is usually a bullet character \(bu
for unordered lists, a number (or auto-incrementing number register) for
numbered lists, or a word or phrase for indented (glossary-style)
lists.
- The width specifies the indent for the body of each
list item. Once specified, the indent remains the same for all list items
in the document until specified again.
Use the
ta request to set tab stops as needed. Use the
TA macro to
reset tabs to the default (every 5n). You can redefine the
TA macro to
create a different set of default tab stops.
Use displays to show text-based examples or figures (such as code listings).
Displays turn off filling, so lines of code can be displayed as-is without
inserting
br requests in between each line. Displays can be
kept
on a single page, or allowed to break across pages. The following table shows
the display types available.
Display macro |
|
Type of display |
With keep |
No keep |
|
|
.DS L |
.LD |
Left-justified. |
.DS I [indent] |
.ID |
Indented (default indent in the DI register). |
.DS B |
.BD |
Block-centered (left-justified, longest line centered). |
.DS C |
.CD |
Centered. |
.DS R |
.RD |
Right-justified. |
|
Use the
DE macro to end any display type. The macros
Ds and
De were formerly provided as aliases for
DS and
DE,
respectively, but they have been removed, and should no longer be used. X11
documents which actually use
Ds and
De always load a specific
macro file from the X11 distribution (
macros.t) which provides proper
definitions for the two macros.
To
keep text together on a page, such as a paragraph that refers to a
table (or list, or other item) immediately following, use the
KS and
KE macros. The
KS macro begins a block of text to be kept on a
single page, and the
KE macro ends the block.
You can specify a
floating keep using the
KF and
KE macros.
If the keep cannot fit on the current page,
groff holds the contents of
the keep and allows text following the keep (in the source file) to fill in
the remainder of the current page. When the page breaks, whether by an
explicit
bp request or by reaching the end of the page,
groff
prints the floating keep at the top of the new page. This is useful for
printing large graphics or tables that do not need to appear exactly where
specified.
The macros
B1 and
B2 can be used to enclose a text within a box;
.B1 begins the box, and
.B2 ends it. Text in the box is
automatically placed in a diversion (keep).
The
ms macros support the standard
groff preprocessors:
tbl,
pic,
eqn, and
refer. Mark text meant for
preprocessors by enclosing it in pairs of tags as follows:
-
.TS [H] and .TE
- Denote a table to be processed by the tbl
preprocessor. The optional H argument instructs groff
to create a running header with the information up to the TH macro.
Groff prints the header at the beginning of the table; if the table
runs onto another page, groff prints the header on the next page as
well.
-
.PS and .PE
- Denote a graphic to be processed by the pic
preprocessor. You can create a pic file by hand, using the AT&T
pic manual available on the Web as a reference, or by using a
graphics program such as xfig.
-
.EQ [align] and .EN
- Denote an equation to be processed by the eqn
preprocessor. The optional align argument can be C,
L, or I to center (the default), left-justify, or
indent the equation, respectively.
-
.[ and .]
- Denote a reference to be processed by the refer
preprocessor. The GNU refer(1) manual page provides a comprehensive
reference to the preprocessor and the format of the bibliographic
database.
The
ms macros provide a flexible footnote system. You can specify a
numbered footnote by using the
\** escape, followed by the text of the
footnote enclosed by
FS and
FE macros.
You can specify symbolic footnotes by placing the mark character (such as
\(dg for the dagger character) in the body text, followed by the text
of the footnote enclosed by
FS \(dg and
FE macros.
You can control how
groff prints footnote numbers by changing the value
of the
FF register as follows:
- 0
- Prints the footnote number as a superscript; indents the
footnote (default).
- 1
- Prints the number followed by a period (that
is, “1.”) and indents the footnote.
- 2
- Like 1, without an indent.
- 3
- Like 1, but prints the footnote number as a
paragraph with a hanging indent.
You can use footnotes safely within keeps and displays, but avoid using numbered
footnotes within floating keeps. You can set a second
\** between a
\** and its corresponding
.FS; as long as each
.FS occurs
after the corresponding
\** and the occurrences of
.FS
are in the same order as the corresponding occurrences of
\**.
There are three ways to define headers and footers:
- •
- Use the strings LH, CH, and RH to set
the left, center, and right headers. Use LF, CF, and
RF to set the left, center, and right footers. The string-setting
approach works best for documents that do not distinguish between odd and
even pages.
- •
- Use the OH and EH macros to define headers
for the odd and even pages, and OF and EF macros to define
footers for the odd and even pages. This is more flexible than defining
the individual strings. The syntax for these macros is as follows:
- where XX is one of the foregoing four macros and
each of left, center, and right is text of your
choice. You can replace the quote (') marks with any character not
appearing in the header or footer text.
- •
- You can redefine the PT and BT macros to
change the behavior of the header and footer, respectively. The header
process also calls the (undefined) HD macro after PT; you
can define this macro if you need additional processing after printing the
header (for example, to draw a line below the header).
You control margins using a set of number registers. The following table lists
the register names and defaults:
Reg. |
Definition |
Effective |
Default |
|
PO |
Page offset (left margin) |
next page |
1i |
LL |
Line length |
next paragraph |
6i |
LT |
Header/footer length |
next paragraph |
6i |
HM |
Top (header) margin |
next page |
1i |
FM |
Bottom (footer) margin |
next page |
1i |
|
Note that there is no right margin setting. The combination of page offset and
line length provide the information necessary to derive the right margin.
The
ms macros can set text in as many columns as will reasonably fit on
the page. The following macros are available. All of them force a page break
if a multi-column mode is already set. However, if the current mode is
single-column, starting a multi-column mode does
not force a page
break.
- .1C
- Single-column mode.
- .2C
- Two-column mode.
-
.MC [column-width [gutter-width]]
- Multi-column mode. If you specify no arguments, it is
equivalent to the 2C macro. Otherwise, column-width is the
width of each column and gutter-width is the space between columns.
The MINGW number register is the default gutter width.
Wrap text that you want to appear in the table of contents in
XS and
XE macros. Use the
TC macro to print the table of contents at
the end of the document, resetting the page number to
i (Roman
numeral 1).
You can manually create a table of contents by specifying a page number as the
first argument to
XS. Add subsequent entries using the
XA macro.
For example:
.XS 1
Introduction
.XA 2
A Brief History of the Universe
.XA 729
Details of Galactic Formation
...
.XE
Use the
PX macro to print a manually-generated table of contents without
resetting the page number.
If you give the argument
no to either
PX or
TC,
groff suppresses printing the title specified by the
\*[TOC]
string.
Traditionally, the
ms macros only support integer values for the
document's font size and vertical spacing. To overcome this restriction,
values larger than or equal to 1000 are taken as fractional values, multiplied
by 1000. For example, ‘.nr PS 10250’ sets the font
size to 10.25 points.
The following four registers accept fractional point sizes:
PS,
VS,
FPS, and
FVS.
Due to backwards compatibility, the value of
VS must be smaller than
40000 (this is 40.0 points).
The
groff ms macros are a complete re-implementation, using no original
AT&T code. Since they take advantage of the extended features in
groff, they cannot be used with AT&T
troff. Other
differences include:
- •
- The internals of groff ms differ from the internals
of Unix ms. Documents that depend upon implementation details of
Unix ms may not format properly with groff ms.
- •
- The error-handling policy of groff ms is to detect
and report errors, rather than silently to ignore them.
- •
- Some Bell Labs localisms are not implemented by default.
However, if you call the otherwise undocumented SC section-header
macro, you will enable implementations of three other archaic Bell Labs
macros: UC, P1, and P2. These are not enabled by
default because (a) they were not documented, in the original ms
manual, and (b) the P1 and UC macros both collide
with different macros in the Berkeley version of ms.
- These emulations are sufficient to give back the 1976
Kernighan & Cherry paper Typesetting Mathematics –
User's Guide its section headings, and restore some text that had gone
missing as arguments of undefined macros. No warranty express or implied
is given as to how well the typographic details these produce match the
original Bell Labs macros.
- •
- Berkeley localisms, in particular the TM and
CT macros, are not implemented.
- •
-
Groff ms does not work in compatibility mode (e.g.,
with the -C option).
- •
- There is no support for typewriter-like devices.
- •
-
Groff ms does not provide cut marks.
- •
- Multiple line spacing is not supported (use a larger
vertical spacing instead).
- •
- Some Unix ms documentation says that the CW
and GW number registers can be used to control the column width and
gutter width, respectively. These number registers are not used in
groff ms.
- •
- Macros that cause a reset (paragraphs, headings, etc.) may
change the indent. Macros that change the indent do not increment or
decrement the indent, but rather set it absolutely. This can cause
problems for documents that define additional macros of their own. The
solution is to use not the in request but instead the RS and
RE macros.
- •
- The number register GS is set to 1 by the
groff ms macros, but is not used by the Unix ms macros.
Documents that need to determine whether they are being formatted with
Unix ms or groff ms should use this number register.
- •
- To make groff ms use the default page offset (which
also specifies the left margin), the PO number register must stay
undefined until the first ms macro is evaluated. This implies that
PO should not be used early in the document, unless it is changed
also: remember that accessing an undefined register automatically defines
it.
You can redefine the following strings to adapt the
groff ms macros to
languages other than English:
String |
Default Value |
|
REFERENCES |
References |
ABSTRACT |
ABSTRACT |
TOC |
Table of Contents |
MONTH1 |
January |
MONTH2 |
February |
MONTH3 |
March |
MONTH4 |
April |
MONTH5 |
May |
MONTH6 |
June |
MONTH7 |
July |
MONTH8 |
August |
MONTH9 |
September |
MONTH10 |
October |
MONTH11 |
November |
MONTH12 |
December |
|
The
\*- string produces an em dash—like this.
Use
\*Q and
\*U to get a left and right typographer's quote,
respectively, in
troff (and plain quotes in
nroff).
The
FAM string sets the default font family. If this string is undefined
at initialization, it is set to Times.
The point size, vertical spacing, and inter-paragraph spacing for footnotes are
controlled by the number registers
FPS,
FVS, and
FPD; at
initialization these are set to
\n(PS-2,
\n[FPS]+2, and
\n(PD/2, respectively. If any of these registers are defined before
initialization, the initialization macro does not change them.
The hyphenation flags (as set by the
hy request) are set from the
HY register; the default is 6.
Improved accent marks (as originally defined in Berkeley's
ms version)
are available by specifying the
AM macro at the beginning of your
document. You can place an accent over most characters by specifying the
string defining the accent directly after the character. For example,
n\*~ produces an n with a tilde over it.
The following conventions are used for names of macros, strings, and number
registers. External names available to documents that use the
groff ms
macros contain only uppercase letters and digits.
Internally the macros are divided into modules; naming conventions are as
follows:
- •
- Names used only within one module are of the form
module*name.
- •
- Names used outside the module in which they are defined are
of the form module@name.
- •
- Names associated with a particular environment are of the
form environment:name; these are used only within the
par module.
- •
-
name does not have a module prefix.
- •
- Constructed names used to implement arrays are of the form
array!index.
Thus the groff ms macros reserve the following names:
- •
- Names containing the characters *, @,
and :.
- •
- Names containing only uppercase letters and digits.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/ms.tmac (a wrapper file for
s.tmac)
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/s.tmac
The GNU version of the
ms macro package was written by James Clark and
contributors. This document was (re-)written by
Larry Kollar
groff(1),
troff(1),
tbl(1),
pic(1),
eqn(1),
refer(1)
Groff: The GNU Implementation of troff, by Trent A. Fisher and Werner
Lemberg