.\" This module is believed to contain source code proprietary to AT&T.
.\" Use and redistribution is subject to the Berkeley Software License
.\" Agreement and your Software Agreement with AT&T (Western Electric).
.\" @(#)ms 8.1 (Berkeley) 8/14/93
.EH 'USD:17-%''Using the \-ms Macros with Troff and Nroff'
.OH 'Using the \-ms Macros with Troff and Nroff''USD:17-%'
....TM 76-1274-16 39199 39199-11
Typing Documents on the UNIX System:
Using the \-ms Macros with Troff and Nroff
This document describes a set of easy-to-use macros
for preparing documents on the UNIX system.
Documents may be produced on either the
phototypesetter or a on a computer terminal,
without changing the input.
The macros provide facilities for paragraphs, sections (optionally
with automatic numbering), page titles, footnotes,
tables, two-column format, and
This memo includes, as an appendix,
the text of the ``Guide to Preparing
which contains additional examples
This manual is a revision of, and replaces,
``Typing Documents on UNIX,''
This memorandum describes a package of commands to produce
formatting programs on the
text is prepared interspersed with formatting commands.
which itself is written in
provides higher-level commands
than those provided with the basic
The commands available in this package are listed in
Type normally, except that instead of indenting for paragraphs,
place a line reading ``.PP'' before each paragraph.
This will produce indenting and extra space.
Alternatively, the command .LP that was used here will produce
a left-aligned (block) paragraph.
The paragraph spacing can be changed: see below under ``Registers.''
For a document with a paper-type cover sheet, the input should start as follows:
[optional overall format .RP \- see below]
Title of document (one or more lines)
Author(s) (may also be several lines)
Abstract; to be placed on the cover sheet of a paper.
Line length is 5/6 of normal; use .ll here to change.
text ... (begins with .PP, which see)
To omit some of the standard headings
(e.g. no abstract, or no author's institution) just
omit the corresponding fields and command lines.
can be suppressed by writing ``.AB no'' for ``.AB''.
Several interspersed .AU and .AI lines can be used for multiple authors.
The headings are not compulsory: beginning
with a .PP command is perfectly OK and will just
start printing an ordinary paragraph.
You can't just begin a document with a line of text.
precede any text input. When in doubt, use .LP
to get proper initialization, although any of
the commands .PP, .LP, .TL, .SH, .NH is good enough.
Figure 1 shows the legal arrangement of commands at the
Cover Sheets and First Pages.
of a document signals the general format of the first page.
In particular, if it is ".RP" a cover sheet with title and
is useful for scanning drafts.
In general \-ms is arranged so that only one form
of a document need be stored, containing all
information; the first command gives the format,
and unnecessary items for that format are ignored.
Warning: don't put extraneous material
between the .TL and .AE commands. Processing
special, and other data placed in them may not behave
Don't forget that some \-ms command must precede any input text.
The \-ms macros, by default, will print a page heading containing
a page number (if greater than 1).
A default page footer is provided only in
The user can make minor adjustments to the page headings/footings
which are the left, center and right portions of the page headings,
which are the left, center and right portions of the page footer.
For more complex formats, the user can redefine
the macros PT and BT, which are invoked respectively at the top
The margins (taken from registers HM and FM for the top and bottom
margin respectively) are normally 1 inch; the page header/footer are
in the middle of that space.
The user who redefines these macros should be careful
not to change parameters such as point size or font
without resetting them to default values.
If you place the command ``.2C'' in your document, the document will
be printed in double column format beginning
at that point. This feature is not too useful in computer
terminal output, but is often desirable on the typesetter.
The command ``.1C'' will go
back to one-column format and also skip to a new page.
The ``.2C'' command is actually a special case of the command
.MC [column width [gutter width]]
which makes multiple columns with the specified column
and gutter width; as many columns as will fit across the page
Thus triple, quadruple, ... column pages can be printed.
Whenever the number of columns is changed (except going from
full width to some larger number of columns)
To produce a special heading, there are two commands.
type section heading here
you will get automatically numbered section headings (1, 2, 3, ...),
Care and Feeding of Department Heads
Care and Feeding of Department Heads
Care and Feeding of Directors
will print the heading with no number added:
Care and Feeding of Directors
Every section heading, of either type, should be followed
by a paragraph beginning with .PP or .LP, indicating
Headings may contain more than one line
The .NH command also supports more complex numbering schemes.
If a numerical argument is given, it is taken to be a
``level'' number and an appropriate sub-section
Larger level numbers indicate deeper
sub-sections, as in this example:
Morris and Essex Division
Morris and Essex Division
An explicit ``.NH 0'' will reset the numbering of level 1
(Paragraphs with hanging numbers, e.g. references.)
Text for first paragraph, typed
normally for as long as you would
like on as many lines as needed.
Text for second paragraph, ...
Text for first paragraph, typed normally for as long
as you would like on as many lines as
Text for second paragraph, ...
A series of indented paragraphs may be followed by an ordinary paragraph
beginning with .PP or .LP,
depending on whether you wish indenting or not.
The command .LP was used here.
More sophisticated uses of .IP are also possible.
If the label is omitted, for example, a plain block indent
block indent suitable for quotations or
quotations or such matter.
If a non-standard amount of indenting is required,
it may be specified after the label (in character positions)
and will remain in effect until the next .PP or .LP.
Thus, the general form of the .IP command
contains two additional fields: the label and the indenting
Notice the longer label, requiring larger
indenting for these paragraphs.
Notice the longer label, requiring larger
indenting for these paragraphs.
It is also possible to produce multiple nested indents;
the command .RS indicates that the next .IP starts from the
current indentation level.
Each .RE will eat up one level of indenting
so you should balance .RS and .RE commands.
The .RS command should be thought of as ``move right'' and
the .RE command as ``move left''.
All of these variations on .LP leave the right
margin untouched. Sometimes, for purposes
such as setting off a quotation, a paragraph indented
on both right and left is required.
by preceding it with .QP.
More complicated material (several paragraphs) should be
bracketed with .QS and .QE.
(on the typesetter) or underlining (on the terminal)
The .R command restores the normal (usually Roman) font.
If only one word is to be italicized, it
may be just given on the line with the .I command,
and in this case no .R is needed to restore
Text to be set in boldface
and also will be underlined on the terminal or line printer.
As with .I, a single word can be placed in boldface
by placing it on the same line as the .B command.
can be specified similarly with
the commands .LG (make larger), .SM (make smaller), and .NL
is two points; the commands may be repeated for
(here one .NL canceled two .SM commands).
as opposed to italicizing is required on the typesetter,
will underline a word. There is no way to underline
multiple words on the typesetter.
Material placed between lines with the commands .FS
(footnote) and .FE (footnote end) will
be collected, remembered, and finally placed
at the bottom of the current page*.
By default, footnotes are 11/12th the
but this can be changed using the FL register (see below).
To prepare displays of lines, such as tables, in which
the lines should not be re-arranged,
enclose them in the commands .DS and .DE
examples here, are placed
By default, lines between .DS and .DE are indented and left-adjusted.
You can also center lines, or retain the left margin.
Lines bracketed by .DS C and .DE commands are
centered (and not re-arranged); lines bracketed
by .DS L and .DE are left-adjusted, not indented, and
A plain .DS is equivalent
to .DS I, which indents and left-adjusts. Thus,
these lines were preceded
these lines were preceded
Note that .DS C centers each line; there is a variant .DS B
that makes the display into a left-adjusted block of text, and
then centers that entire block.
Normally a display is kept together, on one page.
If you wish to have a long display which
use .CD, .LD, or .ID in place of
the commands .DS C, .DS L, or .DS I respectively.
An extra argument to the .DS I or .DS command is taken
Note: it is tempting to assume that .DS R will right adjust
lines, but it doesn't work.
To draw rectangular boxes around words the command
The boxes will not be neat on a terminal, and this
should not be used as a substitute for italics.
Longer pieces of text may be boxed
by enclosing them with .B1 and .B2:
If you wish to keep a table or other block of lines
together on a page, there are ``keep - release'' commands.
If a block of lines preceded by .KS and followed by .KE does
not fit on the remainder of the current page, it will begin
Lines bracketed by .DS and .DE commands are automatically
There is also a ``keep floating'' command: if the
block to be kept together is preceded by .KF instead of .KS
on the current page, it will be moved down through the text
until the top of the next page. Thus, no large blank space
will be introduced in the document.
Among the useful commands from the basic formatting programs
are the following. They all work with both typesetter and
computer terminal output:
.br - ``break'', stop running text
.sp n - insert n blank lines.
.na - don't adjust right margins.
By default, documents produced on computer terminals have the
date at the bottom of each page; documents produced on
To force the date, say ``.DA''. To force no date, say ``.ND''.
To lie about the date, say ``.DA July 4, 1776''
which puts the specified date at the bottom of each page.
places the specified date on the cover sheet and nowhere else.
Place this line before the title.
You can obtain a signature line by placing
the command .SG in the document.
be output in place of the .SG line.
as a typing identification line, and
placed after the signatures.
The .SG command is ignored
in released paper format.
Certain of the registers used by \-ms can
be altered to change default
They should be changed with .nr commands,
to make the default point size 9 point.
If the effect is needed immediately, the
in addition to changing the number register.
Register Defines Takes Default
PS point size next para. 10
VS line spacing next para. 12 pts
LL line length next para. 6\(fm\(fm
LT title length next para. 6\(fm\(fm
PD para. spacing next para. 0.3 VS
PI para. indent next para. 5 ens
FL footnote length next FS 11/12 LL
CW column width next 2C 7/15 LL
GW intercolumn gap next 2C 1/15 LL
PO page offset next page 26/27\(fm\(fm
HM top margin next page 1\(fm\(fm
FM bottom margin next page 1\(fm\(fm
LH, CH, and RH which are the left, center, and right headings
respectively; and similarly LF, CF, and RF which are strings in the
is taken from register PN, to permit
changing its output style.
For more complicated headers and footers
the macros PT and BT can be redefined, as
To simplify typing certain foreign words,
strings representing common accent marks are defined.
They precede the letter over which the mark
Input Output Input Output
\e*\(gae \*`e \e*Ce \h'0.15m'\v'-0.6m'\s6\zv\s0\v'0.6m'\h'-0.15m'e
After your document is prepared and stored on a file,
you can print it on a terminal with the command*
* If .2C was used, pipe the
make the first line of the input
and you can print it on the typesetter with the
(many options are possible).
In each case, if your document is stored in several files,
just list all the filenames
where we have used ``file''.
If equations or tables are used,
must be invoked as preprocessors.
References and further study.
If you have to do Greek or mathematics, see
provides definitions of .EQ and .EN
which normally center the equation and set it off slightly.
An argument on .EQ is taken to be an equation
number and placed in the right margin near the equation.
In addition, there are three special arguments to EQ:
the letters C, I, and L indicate centered (default),
indented, and left adjusted equations, respectively.
If there is both a format argument
give the format argument first, as in
for a left-adjusted equation numbered (1.3a).
to separate tables (see [2]) from text with a little space.
A very long table with a heading may be broken
across pages by beginning it with .TS H
and placing the line .TH in the table data
after the heading. If the table
has no heading repeated from page to page,
just use the ordinary .TS and .TE macros.
[3] for a general introduction, and [4]
for the full details (experts only).
Information on related UNIX commands
For jobs that do not seem well-adapted
to \-ms, consider other macro packages.
It is often far easier to write a specific macro packages
for such tasks as imitating particular journals than
Many thanks are due to Brian Kernighan for
his help in the design and implementation of this package,
and for his assistance in preparing this manual.
B. W. Kernighan and L. L. Cherry,
Typesetting Mathematics \(em Users Guide (2nd edition),
Bell Laboratories Computing Science Report no. 17.
Tbl \(em A Program to Format Tables,
Bell Laboratories Computing Science Report no. 45.
Nroff\|/Troff Reference Manual,
Bell Laboratories Computing Science Report no. 51.
K. Thompson and D. M. Ritchie,
UNIX Programmer's Manual,
1C Return to single column format. LG Increase type size.
2C Start double column format. LP Left aligned block paragraph.
AI Specify author's institution.
AU Specify author. ND Change or cancel date.
B Begin boldface. NH Specify numbered heading.
DA Provide the date on each page. NL Return to normal type size.
DE End display. PP Begin paragraph.
DS Start display (also CD, LD, ID).
EN End equation. R Return to regular font (usually Roman).
EQ Begin equation. RE End one level of relative indenting.
FE End footnote. RP Use released paper format.
FS Begin footnote. RS Relative indent increased one level.
SG Insert signature line.
I Begin italics. SH Specify section heading.
SM Change to smaller type size.
IP Begin indented paragraph. TL Specify title.
KF Begin floating keep. UL Underline one word.
The following register names are used by \-ms internally.
Independent use of these names in one's own macros may
produce incorrect output.
Note that no lower case letters are used in any \-ms internal name.
Number registers used in \-ms
: DW GW HM IQ LL NA OJ PO T. TV
#T EF H1 HT IR LT NC PD PQ TB VS
.T FC H2 IF IT MF ND PE PS TC WF
1T FL H3 IK KI MM NF PF PX TD YE
AV FM H4 IM L1 MN NS PI RO TN YY
CW FP H5 IP LE MO OI PN ST TQ ZN
String registers used in \-ms
\(fm A5 CB DW EZ I KF MR R1 RT TL
\(ga AB CC DY FA I1 KQ ND R2 S0 TM
^ AE CD E1 FE I2 KS NH R3 S1 TQ
~ AI CF E2 FJ I3 LB NL R4 S2 TS
: AU CH E3 FK I4 LD NP R5 SG TT
, B CM E4 FN I5 LG OD RC SH UL
1C BG CS E5 FO ID LP OK RE SM WB
2C BT CT EE FQ IE ME PP RF SN WH
A1 C D EL FS IM MF PT RH SY WT
A2 C1 DA EM FV IP MH PY RP TA XD
A3 C2 DE EN FY IZ MN QF RQ TE XF
A4 CA DS EQ HO KE MO R RS TH XK
Figure 1:\ \ Order of Commands in Input