Re: [Groff] Treatment of annotation paragraphs in refer

[Zvezdan Petkovic]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 03:55:10PM -0500, Bill Ward wrote:
> However, refer turns the annotation text into one long string defined
> using the .ds command and all troff commands are lost; e.g.,

You can tell it to turn it into something else instead of the default
".ds".
For example

        .R1 
        annotate X (q
        .R2

will instruct refer to replace every "X" field with ".(q", which is the
beginning of quoted paragraph in -me macros.

One can add a closing ".)q" at the end of annotation in the reference.
However, I prefer to add the closing ".)q" using a postrefer.sed script
from a Makefile.

Thus my annotations look like this after refer.

        .(q
        annotation
        .)q

and produce a quotation paragraph in slightly smaller font indented
inside from the left and right side.

> .de [X
> First paragraph of annnotation.
> .LP 
> Second paragraph of annotation.
> ..

I believe it would be better if it just turns it into
.LP
First paragraph.
.LP
Second paragraph.

> Anyone know of any way to circumvent this problem?

I hope the above hint helps.

Best regards,

        Zvezdan Petkovic