5.24.6 End-of-input Traps

Request: .em macro

Set a trap at the end of input. macro is executed after the last line of the input file has been processed.

For example, if the document had to have a section at the bottom of the last page for someone to approve it, the em request could be used.

.de approval
\c
.  ne 3v
.  sp (\\n[.t]u - 3v)
.  in +4i
.  lc _
.  br
Approved:\t\a
.  sp
Date:\t\t\a
..
.
.em approval

The \c in the above example needs explanation. For historical reasons (and for compatibility with AT&T troff), the end macro exits as soon as it causes a page break and no remaining data is in the partially collected line.

Let us assume that there is no \c in the above approval macro, and that the page is full and has been ended with, say, a br request. The ne request now causes the start of a new page, which in turn makes troff exit immediately for the reasons just described. In most situations this is not intended.

To always force processing the whole end macro independently of this behaviour it is thus advisable to insert something that starts an empty partially filled line (\c) whenever there is a chance that a page break can happen. In the above example, the call of the ne request assures that the remaining code stays on the same page, so we have to insert \c only once.

The next example shows how to append three lines, then starting a new page unconditionally. Since ‘.ne 1’ doesn’t give the desired effect – there is always one line available or we are already at the beginning of the next page – we temporarily increase the page length by one line so that we can use ‘.ne 2’.

.de EM
.pl +1v
\c
.ne 2
line one
.br
\c
.ne 2
line two
.br
\c
.ne 2
line three
.br
.pl -1v
\c
'bp
..
.em EM

Note that this specific feature affects only the first potential page break caused by the end macro; further page breaks emitted by the end macro are handled normally.

Another possible use of the em request is to make gtroff emit a single large page instead of multiple pages. For example, one may want to produce a long plain-text file for reading on-screen. The idea is to set the page length at the beginning of the document to a very large value to hold all the text, and automatically adjust it to the exact height of the document after the text has been output.

.de adjust-page-length
.  br
.  pl \\n[nl]u   \" \n[nl] holds the current page length
..
.
.de single-page-mode
.  pl 99999
.  em adjust-page-length
..
.
.\" activate the above code
.single-page-mode

Since only one end-of-input trap does exist and other macro packages may already use it, care must be taken not to break the mechanism. A simple solution would be to append the above macro to the macro package’s end-of-input macro using the .am request.