Re: [Groff] Line continuation

[Larry Kollar]

Miklos Somogyi wrote:

> When one needs to break a long line, the continuation needs to  
> start at the beginning
> of the next line. This spoils the readability of the file.
> I would like to have something like this:
>
> xxx   yyyy  wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww\X
>                    wwwwwwwwww
>
> where \X would cause groff to ignore the newline as well as the  
> leading spaces of the next line.

I think you want \: which inserts a zero-width space. You can put in  
as many as you want at different points in the string where a break  
would look good. So if you have, say, a long URL, you could format it  
like this:

.CW "http://foo.example.org/\:some_directory/\:a_sub_dir/ 
\:sub_sub_dir/\:flowchart.png"

If the URL hits the margin, groff puts the break after the / closest  
to the margin without going over.

Hope that helps,

-- Larry