Re: [Groff] inconsistency between .R and \*R in man.tmac

[Bernd Warken]

On Sat, Dec 22, 2001 at 01:36:31PM +0000, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > > 
> > > Have \*R be (Reg) as God intended.  But also trap any arguments
> > > being passed to .R and error else they'll otherwise disappear as we
> > > saw with mkisofs.  The use of just `.R' on a line to affect the
> > > next line won't work but the next line of text won't disappear so
> > > it's not too bad.
> > 
> > Sounds good!  Do you volunteer to supply a patch?
> 
> I've tried and failed  :-(
> 
You're right.  But this is due to some bugs, both in the macro/string 
equivalence and within the man macro package.  Try the following

############ groff -man

.TH dummy 0
.
.eo
.de R
\c
.  ie \n[.$]=0 \[rg]\c
.  el .RI "\$*"
..
.ec
.
.I Embedded string R :
No\*Rspace.
.br
.I Macro .R without args :
when called as a macro
.R
a leading space character is added.
.br
.I Macro .R with args : 
.B This is bold,
.R prints the args in Roman,
.I some other text.
.br
.B This should be \*R a single line entirely in bold.

###################

This works as expected, except for the last line, which has everything
after \*R in Roman.

In plain groff (without -man), however, it is alright when .B is 
defined as follows.

.eo
.de B
.  nop \fB\$*\fP
..
.ec


Bernd Warken