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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!wildbill
From: wildbill@ucbvax.UUCP (William J. Laubenheimer)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Need help with -me macros: problem with .ip and hanging tags
Message-ID: <1101@ucbvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Jun-84 01:20:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.1101
Posted: Mon Jun 18 01:20:54 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Jun-84 01:02:22 EDT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley
Lines: 30

I have been having a problem with the .ip (indented paragraph) macro.
What I would like to do in a list where I have a bunch of hanging tags
such as "First:", "Second:", etc., in order to get the proper indentation
on the indented paragraphs, is to have {n,t}roff calculate the proper
indentation using the width operator \w. It seems that the proper
invocation (assuming "Second:" was the longest tag) would be:

.ip First: \w'Second: '

but when I try this, the result is a funny string attached to the
end of the preceding text item, such as in the following example:

291.@p 150u

in this case. This looks like it's coming from the body of the .ip
macro, which calls the internal -me macro .@p just after it identifies
the existence of a hanging tag and sets up a number register containing
the indentation for tags if it is given.

I have tried a few variations: an extra backslash before the width operator,
a unit designation after the second argument, enclosing the first
argument in quotes; all result in the same obnoxious string. Does
anybody out there have a solution, or am I (horrors!) going to have
to make a special case out of the thing?

                  ____                  Bill Laubenheimer
      ___       /      \       ___      UC-Berkeley Computer Science
     /   \     |  o  o  |     /   \     ucbvax!wildbill
------+++----------()----------+++------
          ...Killjoy was here!