The attached "sample.groff" does not flow together lines, following a .PP, expected to compile a paragraph. Yet going the whole .RP trip, for conformity's sake, in groff_primer.ms, *does* spuriously flow together successive \n terminated lines *without* a .PP or .LP, and that's even more useless, really. The spurious proliferation of bold isn't much help either.
The invocations are: $ groff -Tpdf -ms -dpaper=a4 -P-pa4 /tmp/sample.groff > /tmp/sample.pdf $ groff -Tpdf -dpaper=a4l -P-pa4 -P-l -ms groff_primer.ms > /tmp/groff_primer.pdf It seriously looks like the most productive way forward is to go back to raw troff, or failing to find the secret sauce there, look for a more robust utility - sufficiently documented to allow basic work.
groff_primer.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
.RP 0 .nr PS 12 .nr GROWPS 4 .nr PSINCR 2p .TL A Simple Groff Primer .AU Erik Christiansen .AB Just enough to typeset a multipage A5 booklet on A4 paper, demonstrating a few heading font sizes. .AE .PP .SH 2 Prerequisites: A full groff installed, not just groff_basic: $ apt-get update $ apt-get install groff Then gain a working overview of: $ man groff_ms as we'll specify -ms in the groff invocation, to use the Manuscript macro package. .SH 2 "Basic Invocation:" $ groff -Tps -dpaper=a4l -P-pa4 -P-l -ms foo.ms > /tmp/foo.ps The -Tps may be omitted, as it is the default. Use -Tpdf for a foo.pdf. -dpaper=a4l sets A4 landscape as the paper size. -P communicates to postprocessors. -ms selects the Manuscript macro package.
sample.groff
Description: Binary data
sample.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
