NAME¶
groff_ms - groff ms macros
SYNOPSIS¶
groff -ms [
options... ] [
files... ]
groff -m ms [
options... ] [
files... ]
DESCRIPTION¶
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.
USAGE¶
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 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 |
|
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> element. 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
- 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.
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,
- 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).
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.
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
\**.
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:
- 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).
DIFFERENCES FROM troff ms¶
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 Typsetting 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.
NAMING CONVENTIONS¶
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.
FILES¶
/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/tmac/ms.tmac (a wrapper file for
s.tmac)
/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/tmac/s.tmac
SEE ALSO¶
groff(1),
troff(1),
tbl(1),
pic(1),
eqn(1),
refer(1),
Groff: The GNU Implementation of troff by Trent Fisher
and Werner Lemberg.
AUTHOR¶
Original manual page by James Clark
et al; rewritten by Larry Kollar (
lkollar@despammed.com).