Re: Is decreasing top margin with mm macros broken?

[Michał Kruszewski]

Thanks!
The trick with TP macro works.


Best regards,
Michał Kruszewski

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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Monday, May 17, 2021 10:26 PM, Tadziu Hoffmann 
<hoffmann@usm.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:

> > Does anyone how to decrease the top margin with mm macros?
> > There is VM macro that is supposed to change it, however it
> > has no effect on the top margin, when one wants to decrease
> > it. Looks like the top margin can only be increased.
>
> This is possibly a bug. In groff's mm, the option -Tdoes
> set pgheader-size, but this does not appear to be used in
> the page header macro, only pgextra-header-size.
>
> As a workaround, you could use the advice from an old MM manual
> (http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/altos/3068/690-15844-001_Altos_Unix_System_V_Documenters_Workbench_Vol_2_Jul85.pdf),
> which says:
>
> The .VM (vertical margin) macro allows the user to specify
> additional space at the top and bottom of the page. This
> space precedes the page header and follows the page footer.
>
> and also:
>
> Default spacing at the top of the page may be decreased by
> redefining .TP.
>
> and:
>
> Generalized Top-of-Page Processing
>
> Note: This part is intended only for users accustomed
> to writing formatter macros.
>
> During header processing, MM invokes two user-definable macros:
>
> -   The .TP (top of page) macro is invoked in the environment
>     (refer to .ev request) of the header.
>
> -   The .PX is a page header user-exit macro that is invoked
>     (without arguments) when the normal environment has been
>     restored and with the "no-space" mode already in effect.
>
>     ...
>
>     To obtain more specialized page titles, the user may redefine
>     the .TP macro to cause the desired header processing.
>
>     So, if you define
>
>     .de TP
>     ..
>
>     there will be no space at all at the top, and
>
>     .de TP
>     .sp
>     .tl \\*(}t
>     .sp
>     ..
>
>     will give you three lines of top margin, with the default
>     header in the middle.
>