Document Parts (The GNU Troff Manual)

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6.1.1.3 Document Parts

+ +

A correct intermediate output document consists of two parts, the +prologue and the body. +

The task of the prologue is to set the general device parameters using +three exactly specified commands. gtroff’s prologue is +guaranteed to consist of the following three lines (in that order): +

x T device
+x res n h v
+x init
+

+ +

with the arguments set as outlined in Device Control Commands. +The parser for the intermediate output format is able to interpret +additional whitespace and comments as well even in the prologue. +

The body is the main section for processing the document data. +Syntactically, it is a sequence of any commands different from the ones +used in the prologue. Processing is terminated as soon as the first +‘x stop’ command is encountered; the last line of any +gtroff intermediate output always contains such a command. +

Semantically, the body is page oriented. A new page is started by a +‘p’ command. Positioning, writing, and drawing commands are always +done within the current page, so they cannot occur before the first +‘p’ command. Absolute positioning (by the ‘H’ and ‘V’ +commands) is done relative to the current page; all other positioning is +done relative to the current location within this page. +

+ +