Re: Macros for printing envelopes?

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2021 17 Jul 18:14 -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Not in groff world!  To be militantly consistent, I suppose, in groff,
> standard paper formats are always at least as long as they are wide.
> 
> groff_tmac(5) discusses the "papersize" macro file.
> 
>  papersize
>         This macro file is normally loaded at start-up  by  the  troffrc
>         file,  so it is seldom necessary to call it explicitly.  It pro‐
>         vides an interface to set the paper size  on  the  command  line
>         with the option -dpaper=size to groff or troff.  Possible values
>         for size are the ISO and DIN formats “A0–A6”, “B0–B6”,  “C0–C6”,
>         and  “D0–D6”;  the  U.S.  formats  “letter”, “legal”, “tabloid”,
>         “ledger”, “statement”, and “executive”; and the envelope formats
>         “com10”,  “monarch”,  and “DL”.  All formats, even those for en‐
>         velopes, are in portrait orientation, with their  longer  dimen‐
>         sion as the length.  Appending “l” (ell) to any of these denotes
>         landscape orientation instead.  An output driver  typically  re‐
>         quires command-line switches -p and -l to override the paper di‐
>         mensions and orientation,  respectively,  defined  in  its  DESC
>         file; see subsection “Paper sizes” of groff(1).
> 
> Some of the foregoing language is pretty recent.

Thanks, Branden.

I find my system has an interesting quirk.  Either Evince (Gnome
Document Viewer), or CUPS, or something in between defines left and
top margins of 0.25i for envelopes.  After testing with cut pieces of
scratch paper I set the lm and tm of the template to 0.05i and the
positioning is where I want it.  Changing the return address point size
a bit and choosing Helvetica as the font family as Futura is not on my
system, and I am up and going.  I now have a working template for the #6
3/4 (US) envelopes I use along with setting up a custom size in the
Gnome print dialog.

I just ran a #10 envelope and it comes out just as I'd like.  No
proprietary software required!!

Thanks to all.

- Nate

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