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On occasion, you may want to keep several lines of text, or a
region of a document, together on a single page, preventing an automatic
page break within certain boundaries. This can cause a page break to
occur earlier than it normally would. For example, you may want to keep
two paragraphs together, or a paragraph that refers to a table, list, or
figure adjacent to the item it discusses. ms provides the
KS
and KE
macros for this purpose.
You can alternatively specify a floating keep: if a keep cannot
fit on the current page, ms holds it, allowing material following
the keep (in the source document) to fill the remainder of the current
page. When the page breaks by reaching its bottom or by bp
request, ms puts the floating keep at the beginning of the next
page. Use floating keeps to house large graphics or tables that do not
need to appear exactly where they occur in the source document.
KS
begins a keep, KF
a floating keep, and KE
ends a
keep of either kind.
As an alternative to the keep mechanism, the ne
request forces a
page break if there is not at least the amount of vertical space
specified in its argument remaining on the page (see Page Control).
One application of ne
is to reserve space on the page for a
figure or illustration to be included later.
A boxed keep has a frame drawn around it.
B1
begins a keep with a box drawn around it. B2
ends a
boxed keep.
Boxed keep macros cause breaks; to box words within a line, recall
BX
in Typeface and decoration. Box lines are drawn as
close as possible to the text they enclose so that they are usable
within paragraphs. When boxing entire paragraphs thus, you may
improve their appearance by calling B1
after the first
paragraphing macro, and invoking the sp
request before calling
B2
.
.LP .B1 .I Warning: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. .sp \n[PD]/2 \" space by half the inter-paragraph distance .B2
If you want a boxed keep to float, enclose the B1
and B2
calls within a pair of KF
and KE
calls.
Displays turn off filling; lines of verse or program code are
shown with their lines broken as in the source document without
requiring br
requests between lines. Displays can be kept on a
single page or allowed to break across pages. The DS
macro
begins a kept display of the layout specified in its first argument;
non-kept displays are begun with dedicated macros corresponding to their
layout.
Begin (DS
: kept) left-aligned display.
Begin (DS
: kept) display indented by indent if specified,
and by the amount of the DI
register otherwise.
Begin a (DS
: kept) a block display: the entire display is
left-aligned, but indented such that the longest line in the display
is centered on the page.
Begin a (DS
: kept) centered display: each line in the display
is centered.
Begin a (DS
: kept) right-aligned display. This is a GNU
extension.
End any display.
groff
ms inserts the distance stored in the DD
register before and after each pair of display macros; this is a
Berkeley extension. This distance replaces any adjacent inter-paragraph
distance or subsequent spacing prior to a section heading. The
DI
register is a GNU extension; its value is an indentation
applied to displays created with ‘.DS’ and ‘.ID’ without
arguments, to ‘.DS I’ without an indentation argument, and to
indented equations set with ‘.EQ’. Changes to either register take
effect at the next display boundary.
The display distance applies even in footnotes (discussed below), which may cause a footnote with a display at its end to “emptily” spill to the next page. Consider the following tactic to compensate.
.FS Recall the ideal gas law. .nr DD-saved \n[DD] \" stash display distance .nr DD 0 \" eliminate automatic space around display .sp \n[DD-saved]u \" manually put space before it .EQ P V = n R T .EN .FE .nr DD \n[DD-saved] \" restore previous setting
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