Re: [Groff] question about .rs and .nop

[Peter Schaffter]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2013, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
> I cannot reproduce the problem with plain groff, but came across it when
> using macro packages like mm or mom.
> 
> This demonstrates the problem:
> 
> .PRINTSTYLE  TYPESET
> .HEADER_LEFT "top"
> .START
> text1
> .NEWPAGE
> .br
> .rs
> .br
> .sp 5
> text2
> .NEWPAGE
> text3
> .NEWPAGE
> foo
> .br
> .sp 5
> text4
> 
> Put above into file "test" and process with
> 
> groff -mom -Tps test > test.ps; gv test.ps
> 
> and see, how text2 and text3 are placed with the same distance to the header 
> rule.
> For text4, groff finally honors the preceeding .sp 5

I don't know how ms handles this, but with mom, use the ADD_SPACE
macro after NEWPAGE.

.NEWPAGE
.ADD_SPACE 5v
text2

ADD_SPACE exists precisely to solve the problem you're encountering.
It's documented in section 5.3.8 of the docs,

"Changing basic type and formatting parameters after START"
  =>Inserting space at the top of a new page
    =>ADD_SPACE

It's not easy to find in the docs because it's hard to classify.  In
the Quick Reference Guide, it's under "Utilities" in the "Document
processing macros" section.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
http://www.schaffter.ca