2.5 Paper Size

In groff, the page size for gtroff and for output devices are handled separately. See Page Layout, for vertical manipulation of the page size. See Line Layout, for horizontal changes.

A default paper size can be set in the device’s DESC file. Most output devices also have a command line option -p to override the default paper size and option -l to use landscape orientation. See DESC File Format, for a description of the papersize keyword, which takes the same argument as -p.

A convenient shorthand to set a particular paper size for gtroff is command line option -dpaper=size. This defines string paper, which is processed in file papersize.tmac (loaded in the start-up file troffrc by default). Possible values for size are the same as the predefined values for the papersize keyword (but only in lowercase) except a7-d7. An appended ‘l’ (ell) character denotes landscape orientation.

For example, use the following for PS output on A4 paper in landscape orientation:

groff -Tps -dpaper=a4l -P-pa4 -P-l -ms foo.ms > foo.ps

Note that it is up to the particular macro package to respect default page dimensions set in this way (most do).