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GROFF_MS(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual GROFF_MS(7)
groff_ms - groff ms macros
groff -ms [ options... ] [ files... ]
groff -m ms [ options... ] [ files... ]
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
type (font and size), margins, spacing, headers and footers,
and footnotes. 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.
Document control registers
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 next heading 1p
section headings of
increasing importance
GROWPS Heading level beyond which next heading 0
PSINCR is ignored
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
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 next paragraph 1
to be kept together
HORPHANS Number of initial lines next heading 1
to be kept with heading
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
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
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Cover page macros
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.
Paragraphs
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. The
effect is identical to the HTML <BLOCKQUOTE> The next paragraph or
heading returns margins to normal.
The XP macro produces an exdented paragraph. 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.
Headings
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
.als SN-STYLE SN-DOT
it may be changed to the SN-NO-DOT style, if preferred, by
defining the alternative alias
.als SN-STYLE SN-NO-DOT
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:
.als SN SN-NO-DOT
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.
Highlighting
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,
.B foo ) (
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.
Indents
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.
Lists
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.
Tab stops
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.
Displays and keeps
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).
Tables, figures, equations, and references
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
Denotes 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
Denotes 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
Denotes 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.
.[ and .]
Denotes 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.
Footnotes
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 (like 1.) and
indents the footnote.
2 Like 1, without an indent.
3 Like 1, but prints the footnote number as a hanging
paragraph.
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 \**.
Headers and footers
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. This 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:
.OH 'left'center'right'
You can replace the quote (') marks with any character not
appearing in the header or footer text.
You can also 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).
Margins
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.
Multiple columns
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 [width [gutter]]
Multi-column mode. If you specify no arguments, it is
equivalent to the 2C macro. Otherwise, width is the width of
each column and gutter is the space between columns. The
MINGW number register is the default gutter width.
Creating a table of contents
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.
Fractional point sizes
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.
Strings
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).
Text Settings
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 14.
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/local/share/groff/1.22.3/tmac/ms.tmac (a wrapper file for
s.tmac)
/usr/local/share/groff/1.22.3/tmac/s.tmac
groff(1), troff(1), tbl(1), pic(1), eqn(1), refer(1), Groff: The GNU
Implementation of troff by Trent Fisher and Werner Lemberg.
Copyright © 1989-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of
this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that
the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified
versions, except that this permission notice may be included in
translations approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in
the original English.
Original manual page by James Clark et al, rewritten by Larry Kollar
⟨lkollar@despammed.com⟩.
This page is part of the groff (GNU troff) project. Information
about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩. If you have a bug report for
this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩. This
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(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
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Groff Version 1.22.3 4 November 2014 GROFF_MS(7)
Pages that refer to this page: groff(1), grog(1), groff_tmac(5), groff(7)