| 1 | <refentry id="man.justify">
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| 2 | <refmeta>
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| 3 | <refentrytitle>man.justify</refentrytitle>
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| 4 | <refmiscinfo role="type">boolean</refmiscinfo>
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| 5 | </refmeta>
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| 6 | <refnamediv>
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| 7 | <refname>man.justify</refname>
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| 8 | <refpurpose>Justify text to both right and left margins?</refpurpose>
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| 9 | </refnamediv>
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| 10 |
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| 11 | <refsynopsisdiv>
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| 12 | <src:fragment id='man.justify.frag'>
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| 13 | <xsl:param name="man.justify">0</xsl:param></src:fragment>
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| 14 | </refsynopsisdiv>
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| 15 |
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| 16 | <refsect1><title>Description</title>
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| 17 |
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| 18 | <para>If non-zero, text is justified to both the right and left
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| 19 | margins (or, in roff terminology, "adjusted and filled" to both the
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| 20 | right and left margins). If zero (the default), text is adjusted to
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| 21 | the left margin only -- producing what is traditionally called
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| 22 | "ragged-right" text.</para>
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| 23 |
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| 24 | <note>
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| 25 | <para>The default value for this parameter is zero because justified
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| 26 | text looks good only when it is also hyphenated. Without hyphenation,
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| 27 | excessive amounts of space often end up getting between words, in
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| 28 | order to "pad" lines out to align on the right margin.</para>
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| 29 |
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| 30 | <para>The problem is that groff is not particularly smart about how it
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| 31 | does hyphenation; it can end up hyphenating a lot of things that you
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| 32 | don't want hyphenated. So, disabling both justification and
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| 33 | hyphenation ensures that hyphens won't get inserted where you don't
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| 34 | want to them, and you don't end up with lines containing excessive
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| 35 | amounts of space between words.</para>
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| 36 |
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| 37 | <para>However, if do you decide to set a non-zero value for the
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| 38 | <parameter>man.justify</parameter> parameter (to enable
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| 39 | justification), then you should probably also set a non-zero value for
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| 40 | <parameter>man.hyphenate</parameter> (to enable hyphenation).</para>
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| 41 |
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| 42 | <para>Yes, these default settings run counter to how most existing man
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| 43 | pages are formatted. But there are some notable exceptions, such as
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| 44 | the <literal>perl</literal> man pages.</para>
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| 45 | </note>
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| 46 | </refsect1>
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| 47 | </refentry>
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