On Saturday, 6 December 2025 14:10:33 GMT Alexis (surryhill) wrote: > Hi all, > > exploring mm's macros I was a bit surprised to see a dashed line > slightly intended above the organizational affiliation on mm's > default cover page when using the T (default) or H font family. > > With other font families (A, C, BM) the line appears solid. > Looking at m.tmac the line is drawn using the `\[em]` character and I > wonder whether the line would better be drawn using the default > line character when in troff mode to ensure it is always a solid > regardless of the active font family. > > What do people think? > > Please find attached a patch, a minimal working example, and two PDF > documents demonstrating the mwe output before and after the patch > was applied. > > Can others reproduce this "issue"? > I'd greatly appreciated if folks ould provide additional or historical > context to help with my understanding of groff and in this ase mm. > > > Best > Alexis
Hi Alexis, The reason you see a dashed line with the T and H fonts is because these two families are part of the base-14 fonts which do not need to be embedded in the pdf. It is then the duty of the pdf viewer to supply its own version of those fonts. Most viewers provide some way of interrogating which actual fonts are used in the document. If you add "-P-e" to your command the actual fonts groff uses will be embedded in the document, and you will see a solid line. As you are using a bleeding edge groff you can use:- export GROPDF_OPTIONS=-e (NB No -P) Which will ensure fonts are always embedded - this is now considered best practice. This has no bearing on your suggestion for drawing a rule rather than using the em character, just an explanation why you got a dashed line for some fonts. :-) Cheers Deri
