groff_me(7) - Linux manual page
GROFF_ME(7)           Miscellaneous Information Manual           GROFF_ME(7)

NAME SH
       groff_me - “me” macro package for formatting documents with GNU roff

SYNOPSIS SH
       groff -me [option ...] [input-file ...]
       groff -m me [option ...] [input-file ...]

DESCRIPTION SH
       The me package of macro definitions for the roff language provides a
       convenient facility for preparing technical papers in various
       formats.  This manual page describes the GNU version of the me
       macros, which is part of the groff document formatting system.  This
       version can be used with both GNU troff and Unix troff.

       Many roff requests are unsafe in conjunction with this package;
       however, the following requests may be used with impunity after the
       first .pp:

       .bp     begin new page
       .br     break output line here
       .sp n   insert n spacing lines
       .ls n   (line spacing) n=1 single, n=2 double space
       .na     no alignment of right margin
       .ce n   center next n lines
       .ul n   underline next n lines

       Output of the pic, eqn, refer, and tbl preprocessors is acceptable as
       input.

   Macro Reference
       Numeric arguments to macros are denoted with lowercase letters and
       string arguments with uppercase.  An optional macro argument such as
       x appears in brackets, [x].  Note that arguments to macros generally
       must be quoted if they contain whitespace.  An exception is the
       argument to header and footer macros, which require some explanation.
       They take the form “c left c middle c right c”, with spaces added
       here for clarity.  The strings left, middle, and right correspond to
       their page placement and can contain unprotected whitespace, but must
       not contain the (non-space) character c, which delimits them.  For
       brevity, the table presents header and footer arguments as clcmcrc.
       Popular choices for c are the ASCII apostrophe “'” and the ASCII
       double quote “"”.

       This list is incomplete; some requests are too complex to summarize
       in a table, and some that are listed below accept additional
       arguments not shown.  See the -me Reference Manual for interesting
       details.

       Request           Initial   Causes   Explanation
                         Value     Break
       ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       .(c               -         yes      Begin centered block.
       .(d               -         no       Begin delayed text.
       .(f               -         no       Begin footnote.
       .(l               -         yes      Begin list.
       .(q               -         yes      Begin major quote.
       .(x [X]           -         no       Begin item in index (named X).
       .(z               -         no       Begin floating keep.
       .)c               -         yes      End centered block.
       .)d               -         yes      End delayed text.
       .)f               -         yes      End footnote.

       .)l               -         yes      End list.
       .)q               -         yes      End major quote.
       .)x               -         yes      End index item.
       .)z               -         yes      End floating keep.
       .++ M [clcmcrc]   -         no       Define paper section as M, which
                                            must be one of C (chapter), A
                                            (appendix), P (preliminary,
                                            i.e., front matter or table of
                                            contents), AB (abstract), B
                                            (bibliography), RC (chapters
                                            renumbered from page one each
                                            chapter), or RA (appendix
                                            renumbered from page one) (and
                                            set page header to clcmcrc).
       .+c [T]           -         yes      Begin chapter (or appendix,
                                            etc., as set by .++) (with title
                                            T).
       .1c               1         yes      One-column format on a new page.
       .2c               1         yes      Two-column format.
       .EN               -         yes      Space after equation produced by
                                            eqn or neqn.
       .EQ [M [T]]       -         yes      Begin displayed equation (with
                                            indentation M, which must be one
                                            of C (centered, default), I
                                            (indented), or L (justified
                                            left) (and title T in right
                                            margin)).
       .GE               -         yes      End gremlin picture.
       .GS               -         yes      Begin gremlin picture.
       .PE               -         yes      End pic picture.
       .PS               -         yes      Begin pic picture.
       .TE               -         yes      End tbl table.
       .TH               -         yes      End heading of tbl table.
       .TS [H]           -         yes      Begin tbl table; if H, table
                                            repeats heading on each page.
       .b [X [Y]]        -         no       Print X in bold (appending Y in
                                            the previous font); if no
                                            arguments, switch to bold.
       .ba n             0         yes      Augment the base indent (for
                                            regular text, like paragraphs)
                                            by n.
       .bc               -         yes      Begin new column.
       .bi [X [Y]]       -         no       Print X in bold italics
                                            (appending Y in the previous
                                            font); if no arguments, switch
                                            to bold italics.
       .bu               -         yes      Begin bulleted paragraph.
       .bx [X [Y]]       -         no       Print X in a box (with Y
                                            appended).  Renders reliably
                                            only in no-fill mode.
       .ef clcmcrc       """"      no       Set even-numbered page footer.
       .eh clcmcrc       """"      no       Set even-numbered page header.
       .fo clcmcrc       """"      no       Set page footer.
       .hx               -         no       Suppress headers and footers on
                                            next page.
       .he clcmcrc       """"      no       Set page header.
       .hl               -         yes      Draw a horizontal line.
       .i [X [Y]]        -         no       Print X in italics (appending Y
                                            in the previous font); if no
                                            arguments, switch to italics.
       .ip [X [n]]       n=5n      yes      Start indented paragraph (with
                                            hanging tag X (and indentation
                                            n)).
       .lp               -         yes      Begin paragraph with first line
                                            flush left.

       .np               1         yes      Start numbered paragraph.
       .of clcmcrc       """"      no       Set odd-numbered page footer.
       .oh clcmcrc       """"      no       Set odd-numbered page header.
       .pd               -         yes      Print delayed text.
       .pp               -         yes      Begin paragraph with indented
                                            first line.
       .r [X [Y]]        -         no       Print X in roman (appending Y in
                                            the previous font); if no
                                            arguments, switch to roman.
       .re               0.5i      no       Reset tabs to default values.
       .sh [n [T]]       n=1       yes      Start numbered section; print
                                            section number (set to n (and
                                            title T)) in bold.
       .sk               -         no       Leave the next page blank.  Only
                                            one page is remembered ahead.
       .sm X [Y]         -         no       Print X in a smaller point size
                                            (appending Y at the previous
                                            size).
       .sz n             10p       no       Augment the point size by n
                                            points.
       .tp               -         yes      Begin title page.
       .u X [Y]          -         no       Underline X (appending Y without
                                            underlining).  Renders reliably
                                            only in no-fill mode.
       .uh [T]           -         yes      Start unnumbered section (and
                                            print title T in bold).
       .xp [X]           -         no       Print index (named X).

FILES SH
       /usr/share/groff/1.22.3/tmac/me.tmac (a wrapper file for e.tmac)
       /usr/share/groff/1.22.3/tmac/e.tmac

NOTES SH
       Early roff macro packages limited themselves to a single-letter
       namespace (mm, ms, mv, mn, etc.).  It is not known for certain what
       the “e” in “me” stands for, but one can infer a derivation from the
       first initial of Eric P. Allman (then of the University of
       California), who wrote the original technical papers documenting the
       package.

SEE ALSO SH
       groff(1), troff(1)

       -me Reference Manual,
              Eric P. Allman and James Clark may be available at
              /usr/share/doc/groff-base/meref.ps.gz (on Debian-based
              systems).

       Writing Papers with Groff Using -me,
              Eric P. Allman and James Clark may be available at
              /usr/share/doc/groff-base/meintro.ps.gz (on Debian-based
              systems).

       For preprocessors supported by me, see eqn(1), grn(1), pic(1),
       refer(1), and tbl(1).

COLOPHON SH
       This page is part of the groff (GNU troff) project.  Information
       about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩.  This
       page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/groff.git⟩ on 2018-02-02.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the repos‐
       itory was 2018-02-02.)  If you discover any rendering problems in
       this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or
       more up-to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
       improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part
       of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

3rd Berkeley Distribution     24 November 2017                   GROFF_ME(7)

Pages that refer to this page: groff(1)groff_tmac(5)