Re: [Groff] Vertical position not affected by .sp request

[Werner LEMBERG]

> meintro.me doesn't document .bl at all, talking only about .sp as a
> way to leave vertical space (in section 2.4).  This would be a good
> place to add text [...]

I would be glad if you could provide patches for groff_me.man and
meref.me, and, if necessary, for meintro.me also.

> 
>    .bl      blank lines (even at top of page; compare to .sp)
>    .sp      vertical space (except at top of page; compare to .bl)
> 
> Additionally, the .bl description in section 8, "Equivalent to a .sp N
> inside a block", is ambiguously worded, as this could be interpreted
> as either that .bl is "equivalent to a .sp that appears inside a
> block" or "equivalent to .sp when the .bl appears inside a block."
> And ambiguity aside, I don't think this sentence is very illuminating,
> as the description of a block doesn't explain how vertical space is
> handled differently within vs outside a block.  I don't have a suggestion
> to fix this because I don't know what it's trying to say.

I think that this refers to the `.ne' command within the macro
definition of `.bl': It requests N contiguous blank lines on a page
(as a block); if not enough vertical space is available, it starts a
new page.

>> The macro packages ...  might set the "no space" flag, to disable
>> vertical space from being output at the top of the page
> 
> Is this a groff flag?  Where is it documented?  I couldn't find it in
> the info files.

No-space mode is fully documented in the info pages of groff and
shortly mentioned in groff(7).  It gets enabled with '.ns' and ends
with `.rs' or actual text.


    Werner