30.11 Nroff Mode
Nroff mode is a mode like Text mode but modified to handle nroff commands
present in the text. Invoke M-x nroff-mode to enter this mode. It
differs from Text mode in only a few ways. All nroff command lines are
considered paragraph separators, so that filling will never garble the
nroff commands. Pages are separated by ‘.bp’ commands. Comments
start with backslash-doublequote. Also, three special commands are
provided that are not in Text mode:
- M-n
- Move to the beginning of the next line that isn't an nroff command
(
forward-text-line
). An argument is a repeat count.
- M-p
- Like M-n but move up (
backward-text-line
).
- M-?
- Displays in the echo area the number of text lines (lines that are not
nroff commands) in the region (
count-text-lines
).
The other feature of Nroff mode is that you can turn on Electric Nroff
mode. This is a minor mode that you can turn on or off with M-x
electric-nroff-mode (see Minor Modes). When the mode is on, each
time you use <RET> to end a line that contains an nroff command that
opens a kind of grouping, the matching nroff command to close that
grouping is automatically inserted on the following line. For example,
if you are at the beginning of a line and type . ( b <RET>,
this inserts the matching command ‘.)b’ on a new line following
point.
If you use Outline minor mode with Nroff mode (see Outline Mode),
heading lines are lines of the form ‘.H’ followed by a number (the
header level).
Entering Nroff mode runs the hook text-mode-hook
, followed by
the hook nroff-mode-hook
(see Hooks).