4.3 Free Text

Free text is any text that is not part of a macro definition or a directive. A scrap of free text consists of a sequence of items drawn from the following list: non-special printable characters, insert-eol special sequences, insert special character special sequences, insert arbitrary character special sequence.

free_text      = ordinary_text
ordinary_text  = { ordinary_char | eol | text_special }+
text_special   = "@+" | "@@" | "@^" char_spec
ordinary_char  = " ".."~" - special

An example of some rather messy free text is as follows:

This@@ is a very@+ messy
@^D(009)chunk of text indeed.
But FunnelWeb still views it as
a single chunk of text.

FunnelWeb never sees two text chunks next to each other in the input; they are always merged into a single text token.

The free text in an input file does not affect the product files. However, by default, it appears in the printed documentation exactly as it is given in the input file, except that it is filled and justified into paragraphs.

Any printable character or particular sequence of characters may appear in the free text of a document. FunnelWeb ensures that they will appear exactly as given in the input file, even if they happen to be escape characters or commands in the target typesetter. However, FunnelWeb also provides a special mode that allows this censoring to be overridden.