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From: isaac@mulga.OZ (Isaac Balbin)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: Re: Disappearing Text with -me package
Message-ID: <1062@mulga.OZ>
Date: Wed, 19-Feb-86 20:59:11 EST
Article-I.D.: mulga.1062
Posted: Wed Feb 19 20:59:11 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Feb-86 07:03:35 EST
References: <1047@mulga.OZ> <149@nbs-amrf.UUCP> <1050@mulga.OZ> <151@nbs-amrf.UUCP>
Reply-To: isaac@mulga.OZ (Isaac Balbin)
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne
Lines: 39

In article <151@nbs-amrf.UUCP> hopp@nbs-amrf.UUCP (Ted Hopp) writes:
! The problem is that the output of the keep is tied to a break set at top-
! of-page, and the break is never getting triggered.  This is a bug in -me's
! end macro, which should test for such conditions.  (It does test for hanging
! footnotes, but evidently not for things waiting for the next page.)
! 
! A work-around is to force a new page by ending your input with a .bp (break
! page) request.  I simulated your problem (with version 2.15 of -me) and this
! does indeed fix it.  The only disadvantage is that if there is nothing to go
! on the last page (say, the keep fits on the bottom of the last text page) then
! you will get a blank page (except for headers and/or footers).  Unless you are
! doing something with the number of pages emitted, or are seriously concerned
! about paper waste, this won't be a problem.
! 

That sounds correct, and the idea of the .bp was known to me, as was the
one of putting the keep a little earlier (not always possible).
What annoys me though is that this BUG in -me has probably been around since
kingdom come, and we still have people who have to print a thesis look at
the output, fiddle around with some macros, look at the output, fiddle some
more, ... and so on, because the macros do not do what they purport to.
Not to mention the inherent problems with the .ev command which was discussed
in another article and which demonstrated the horrible things that can happen
when you try to use a pre-processor to troff.
Yet, we (me included) persist with troff and its concomitant
buggy macro packages. I actually switched from ms about 3 years ago
because it was worse. Recently it underwent a face-lift to
give it some of the features which -me already had. 
I haven't used mm so I can't comment. At any rate
"me" and "ms" were at least modified to incorporate those features useful
for theses, papers etc. Are we all going to continue living with these incessant
bugs (perhaps fixing a few)? It is lucky we are in the ivory tower, Industry
would have thrown the packages away long ago.
				Isaac Balbin

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