On Oct 27 12:12:21, w...@roquesor.com wrote: > In article <20171026193138.ga41...@www.stare.cz> Jan Stary <h...@stare.cz> > wrote: > > > > > In the ps file generated by mandoc you should have this line: > > > > > > > > > > %%DocumentMedia: Default 595 841 0 () () > > > > > > > > > > Where 595 841 correspond to A4. If you set output paper to "letter" > > > > > that line will say: > > > > > > > > > > %%DocumentMedia: Default 612 790 0 () () > > > > Yes. It seems that these are just _comments_ to the PS interpreter > > and the "Default" is just an arbitrary given name, right? > > (Sorry, I don't know the language.) So GV just shows that, > > but it does not _determine_ the actual media size, right? > > Looking at term_ps.c, mandoc writes "Default ... " for every paper size. > > > > First of all, I'm just a user like you trying to figure out how things > work. So, don't expect from me some deep analysis, for that Ingo is the > right person. > > I answered you - based in what I intuitively observed - that mandoc > honors the paper size, and explained you why I think so. > > I know about postcript language as much as you, as well as what gv takes > in care to print the document on the screen, so first I grep in the > ps file for 'a4|letter' strings and got nothing, then searching on the > Internet I found the dots equivalence and repeated the search this time > using '595 841|612 790'. I did the same with documents generated by GNU > roff. I found the "comment" I mentioned in the other message, so > I opened the ps file with vi(1), changed those numbers, and then > I opened the modified file with gv. That's how I found out gv takes in > care that "comment" to figure out physical page dimensions.
Apparently, it does not: the dimensions are given explicitly in e.g. "%%DocumentMedia: Default 595 841 0 () ()", and the "Default" could just as well be "Foobar", as Ingo explained. > Finally, "default" means "default". :-) Perhaps (guessing again), since > page size use is related to region settings, who designed postscript > (hence gv) thought convenient to honor some wide system setting (based > on locale?). With output paper set to A3, A4, A5 in man.conf, "man -Tps rm > rm.ps" will produce a PostScript file with the correct dimensions, calling all the formats "Default". A printer (such us my Minolta) will print them all on A4, although it does have A3 and A5 paper too. Changing the "%%DocumentMedia: Default ..." line manualy to "A3" or "A5" does not change that. I am not saying mandoc should write A3 or A4 or A5 instead of Default (it's the actual dimensions that matter), but perhaps such a DSC comment might help some appications. Apparently not GV, which just repeats the name, and not my Minolta, which prints on A4 anyway. Jan