Re: [Groff] setting a custom page length

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

> Don't y'all just love dealing with beginners

As with most computer programs, experience helps quite a lot,
and the best way to gain experience is through experimentation.


> I had figured out that I had to pass a page size to grops but
> I had it stuck in my head that it had to be a defined size,
> letter, legal, a2, ...

Which is not surprising, since most printers cannot provide
arbitrary paper sizes, except for some large-format printers
which can cut arbitrary pieces from a large roll.

The feature is handy, however, for stuff which does not
necessarily need to be printed, such as presentations in
the 4:3 aspect ratio of most video projectors.


> Is this not documented or did I just overlook it

It is documented.

>From grops(1):

   -ppaper-size
          Set  physical  dimension  of  output medium.  This overrides the
          papersize, paperlength, and  paperwidth  commands  in  the  DESC
          file;  it  accepts  the same arguments as the papersize command.
          See groff_font (5) for details.

and from groff_font(5):

   papersize string
          Select  a paper size.              [...]                Finally,
          string can be a custom paper size in the format length,width (no
          spaces  before and after the comma).  Both length and width must
          have a unit appended; valid values are `i' for inches,  `c'  for
          centimeters,  `p'  for  points,  and  `P'  for  picas.  Example:
          12c,235p.  An argument which  starts  with  a  digit  is  always
          treated  as a custom paper format.  papersize sets both the ver-
          tical and horizontal dimension of the output medium.