Problems with troff output on a SUN Laserwriter

[Jim Barby]

> In article <430 at comp.lancs.ac.uk> john at comp.lancs.ac.uk (John R. Nicol) writes:
> >
> >I've prepared my Ph.D. thesis using troff and its me macro package. However...
>  
> >"Page offset + Line Length exceeds the width of the paper"
>  
> >The resulting laser-written output is garbled too. Strange thing is the above
> >message is garbage: my line length (.ll) is 5.75i and I'm using std British
> >A4 size paper. 
>  
> I very much expect that 'me' is resetting the line length, somewhere.  Have
> a quick look through its source for '.ll' or a register holding its value.
> Certainly, the 'ms' macros reset the line length...
>  

Your
	"Page offset + Line Length exceeds the width of the paper"
is a warning message only it really is harmless.  Buried in
tmac.e is a
	.nr _l 7.75i
or something close to this.  This register is used as a
threshold indicator.  To overcome this problem I add the
following line at the top of my input file
	.nr _l 8.5i
(based on the assumption that I will never used paper more
than 8.5 inches wide).  Of course you must use '.ll' to set
the desired line size.
-- 
	Jim Barby  (U of Waterloo VLSI Group, Waterloo Ont.)
	...!watmath!watvlsi!jabarby