PS TEXT FORMAT Reference Manual

Introduction to TFORM
1–2 11387 Tandem Computers Incorporated
2. You type TFORM commands in your document along with the rest of
the text. These commands tell TFORM how you want the printed file to
look. You usually enter TFORM commands on lines above the text that
you want TFORM to act upon. TFORM distinguishes commands from
your text by specific characters in the command line.
3. You run TFORM with that document file and give TFORM a print
location to which to send the formatted document. TFORM creates the
formatted output file and sends it to the print location you’ve specified.
Constructing
TFORM Commands
As you create your document (or after you complete it), you enter TFORM
commands to tell TFORM how to format your printed output. The basic
structure of all TFORM commands is the same. It is described in the
following paragraphs.
Parts of a
TFORM Command
A TFORM command is composed of three parts: the trigger character, the
command name, and any values you supply.
The Trigger Character
A TFORM command line begins with a special character, called a trigger
character, in the first position of the line. TFORM uses the backslash (\)
character as the trigger character by default, but if you’re going to use the
backslash often in your text, you can use the DEFINE TRIGGER command
to specify any other printable character as your trigger, except the following
characters:
# - ( ) < > & . ! =
You can’t use these characters because them in other combinations for
special purposes. In this manual, the default backslash (\) character is used
as the trigger character.