Re: [Groff] RE: Small bug in groff 1.19.2 footnote number contro

[Bob Diertens]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 05:48:58PM +0200, Tadziu Hoffmann wrote:
> 
> > Well, there's specifying a second argument to the FD macro
> > which causes the footnote counter to get reset at each
> > first-level heading, but that appears to be just as
> > undocumented.
> 
> >From HP's "Text Formatting User's Guide" (ca. 1991):
> 
>   If the second argument is specified, automatically-numbered
>   footnotes begin again with 1 whenever a first-level heading
>   is encountered.  This is most useful with the "section-page"
>   page numbering scheme.  As an example, the input line
> 
>        .FD "" 1
> 
>   maintains the default formatting style and causes footnotes
>   to be numbered afresh after each first-level heading in a
>   document.

This was already there in the "PWB/MM Programmer's Workbench Memorandom
Macros", D.W. Smith and J.R. Mashey, October 1977.

So there only a bug in the groff_mm manual page.

The same document also mentions the names used by PWB/MM in the chapter
"Extending and Modifying the Macros":

registers:   Aa (most common, accessible to users)
             An (common, accessible to user)
             A (accessible, set on command line)
             :x (mostly internal, rarely accessiblem usually dedicated)
             ;x (internal, dynamic, temporaries)

Seen this, I suggest not to provide aliases for registers :x.
This only clutters up the name-space for registers.

Gr,
    Bob