Re: [Groff] blm blues

[Larry Kollar]

Miklos Somogyi wrote:

> I am trying to produce a macro for request blm that would set space  
> as a given fraction of the current vertical spacing.
>
> I did the following:
>
> -------------------------------------------
>
>  .de blank
> .       nr blankreg (c;\\$1)                                  this  
> would accept things like ".blank 0.42" and convert to "u"
> ..
>
> .de blank_aux
> .      sp (\\n[.v]u*\\n[blankreg]u/28340)u        this macro  would  
> generate space when .blm finds a blank line
> ..
>
> .blm blank_aux                                                this  
> nominates blank_aux to be called by .blm
>
> --------------------------------------------

I know I'm coming in late, but there are two things I'd do  
differently: set a default and use relative spacing (v) instead of  
machine units (u).

.de blank_aux
. if !rblankreg .nr blankreg 0.4v
. sp \\n[blankreg]u
..
.blm blank_aux

Replace the 0.4v above with whatever you want the default value to be  
and it will work with the entire range of devices and text sizes.

-- Larry