Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!necntc!rayssd!hxe
From: hxe@rayssd.ray.com (Heather Emanuel)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: nroff/mm problem
Keywords: .SP .sp top-of-page
Message-ID: <3578@rayssd.ray.com>
Date: 23 Aug 88 18:09:47 GMT
References: <372@seila.UUCP>
Sender: hxe@rayssd.ray.com (Heather Emanuel @ Raytheon Company, Portsmouth RI)
Reply-To: hxe@rayssd.RAY.COM (Heather Emanuel)
Distribution: na
Organization: Raytheon Company, Portsmouth RI
Lines: 47

In article <372@seila.UUCP> don@seila.UUCP (Don Kossman) writes:
> this is driving us crazy:
> 
> how do you force nroff (using the mm macro package)
> to leave n spaces at the top of a page?  .sp and .SP seem
> to have no effect.

MM counts on two things: 1) You don't know, when you are inputting the
document, where the page breaks will fall; and 2) you want nice and
even top margins.  So MM assumes that when you have any spaces, even
those specifically called for with a ".sp", that you don't want them
to fall at the top of a page or else you won't have en even top
margin.  To accomplish this, it turns "no space" mode on for page
breaks.

There are two easy ways around this.  The first is to enter a bogus
top line of the page after your ".SK" or ".bp" (or whatever you use
to break the page).  Do this by typing a backslash-space; e.g.:

	.SK
	\<sp>
	.sp 20
	text

Remember that the first line takes up space so you have to adjust
for it in your ".sp" call.

The other way is to use the ".rs" ("restore spacing") command at the
top of the page, before your ".sp" call; e.g.:

	.SK
	.rs
	.sp 10
	text

I'm not familiar with Ultrix, but these are standard nroff
conventions.  Hope it helps.

-- 
           Heather Emanuel           hxe@rayssd.ray.com
{att,decuac,gatech,ihnp4,mimsy,necntc,raybed2,sun,uiucdcs,ukma}!rayssd!hxe
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