just.1

.TH JUST 1
.UC 4
.SH NAME
just \- text justification program
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
just [-<width>] [-t<tolerance>] [file...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Just
takes one or more files containing text and justifies them to a specified
width, sending the result to standard output.
Default <width> is 72. (The default can be changed by creating a file
in the current directory called ".justwidth" and containing a number.)
If no files are given 
.I just
takes its data from standard input.  Thus either of the following commands
show the simplest use of
.I just
.PP
just oldtext > newtext
.br
just < oldtext > newtext
.PP
This is a simple text formatting program, designed for situations
where the more complex facilities of 
.I nroff
or
.I troff
are not required.
It formats according to the following rules:
.PP
1) blank lines remain blank.
.br
2) if a line begins with spaces, these are preserved and it is not
merged with the previous one.
.br
3) lines which begin with 8 or more spaces (equiv one tab),
or which have a '>' sign in column 1, have their layout frozen completely.
.PP
Otherwise each line is merged with the previous line and reformatted so
as to maximise the number of words in the line and then justify it to the
specified width.  During reformatting the following two extra rules are
observed:
.PP
(a) Between any of the sentence 
terminators '.', '?', '!', and a following word on the same line,
a minimum of
two spaces will be preserved if present in the original text.
.PP
(b) Justification (i.e. padding out to the exact width)
is not performed on a line when
it would require the insertion of more than 
.I <tolerance>
extra spaces in any one place.  This rule is added to make
.I just
behave sensibly when formatting to a width allowing only a small
number of words per line, eg for a newspaper column.
The default tolerance is 3.
.PP
These rules
are quite well adapted to the conventions of normal English text, and
enable
.I just
to be used to format letters, and a variety of simple documents.
Rule (3) provides two conventions whereby fragments of program, tables etc,
can be embedded in such documents and protected from reformatting.
Note that 
.I just
can safely be applied to its own output, eg to reformat to different widths.
(Reapplying 
.I just
with the same width will leave the text unchanged.)
.PP
.I Just
removes tabs from lines which it is reformatting, replacing them by
spaces.  (But tabs in frozen lines will be left alone.)
.PP
.I Just
knows about underlining (in the style "underline-backspace-character...")
and handles underlined words and sentences correctly. 
When preparing text which is to be continuously underlined across wordbreaks,
each non-final line of underlined input should have a trailing
underlined space.
.PP
Setting <tolerance> to zero, as in
`just -t0' will cause reformatting without justification.  Specifying a
negative width also has this effect.  That is `just --72' means 
`just -72 -t0'.
.SH SEE ALSO
vi(1)
.br
fmt(1)  - the advantages of just
over fmt are that it can format to different widths
(fmt is fixed at 72), that it does justification, and that it knows about
underlining.  Like fmt, just
is conveniently called from inside vi, by using the `!' command.

Examples, of using
.I just
inside
.I vi:
To reformat a paragraph, position the
cursor at, or just above, the beginning of the paragraph, and say
.br
!}just
.br
To reformat the whole document say
.br
:1,$!just
.br
These are standard applications of the vi `!' command, which pipes
pieces of text through an arbitrary UNIX command called from inside
the editor - see vi documentation for more information.)
.SH BUGS
When preparing input text, you have to remember to leave at least one
space at the front of each line which is not preceded by a blank line
and which you
.I don't
want merged with the previous line, e.g. successive lines of an address.
Note that this means that
.I just
cannot be used to reformat a paragraph all of whose lines are indented.
(This is the one respect in which
.I fmt 
is superior to
.I just.)
.SH AUTHOR
Research Software Limited.
.I Just
is included in the distribution file for Miranda(tm).