On 6/22/21, Tadziu Hoffmann <hoffm...@usm.uni-muenchen.de> wrote: > To prevent the surprising result on the first page, simply > begin the sequence with a ".br", which then initiates the > first page *before* performing the distance calculation.
This does indeed solve the problem for the simple test file I posted. But I may have simplified my real-world problem too much; this fix doesn't work in the circumstances where I'm actually seeing the problem. Here is a more complex test file using the -me macros. It uses -me's $H macro to define an action that should be done on every page, in this case the printing of a bit of text at an "absolute" vertical position. .mso e.tmac .he ''header' \" -me macro to define a header .nr tf 1 \" make header roman . .de $H \" -me macro called at the top of every page \# .br \" Tadziu's trick \v'|30000u'At 30,000 units. .. . .nr $v 127 \" -me register to set leading .pp Page one. .bp . .nr $v 144 .pp Page two. .hx \" -me macro to suppress header on next page .bp . .pp Page three. Each page has a different combination of leading and presence/absence of header. And the absolute-positioned text on each page is in a different place vertically. (The difference is small, and you need to compare pages carefully to see it.) In this case, the .br that corrected the simpler example has no effect: PostScript output is identical whether or not the .br line is commented out. Since here the \v'|...' is being run from inside a macro called by a trap, it's not clear what causes the discrepancy, or how to avoid it. Is there a reliable way to specify an absolute vertical position?
