Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari!moncskermit!goanna!isaac From: isaac@goanna.oz (Isaac Balbin) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: inherent troff faults Message-ID: <1325@goanna.oz> Date: 15 Jun 88 23:13:40 GMT References: <1309@goanna.oz> Reply-To: isaac@goanna.oz (Isaac Balbin) Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 36 Sorry Andries. In article eggert@sm.unisys.com (Paul Eggert) writes: ! This may arise from a common problem: in some buggy ditroffs, \fP ! doesn't work if you're switching among fonts not mounted by default. ! A workaround is to place a directive like ! ! .fp 4 C ! ! at the start of the input, substituting some unused font number for `4'. ! This will permanently mount font C, dodging the bug. ! Ahhh this explains something else I saw yesterday. Until now I was using an explicit .ft CW inside my .(l .(b .(z to make sure that the output in keeps (-me style) was in CW font. I noticed I also had a .nr df 7 which is supposed to set the font inside keeps to font number 7 == CW for me. I then wondered, why do I then also *explicitly* say .fT CW (you see you do these things and forget why you did them). I chased it all the way to the .@F macro in tmac.e. This macro is used to control the font inside keeps. Here is the macro. .de @F .nr ~ \\$1 .if \\n~>0 \ \{\ . ul 0 . if \\n~>4 \ ***************************** . nr ~ \\n($b . ft \\n~ .\} .rr ~ .. This code explicitly stop you from using any fonts mounted after 4. I wondered why. Indeed, I replaced the macro without the test. However, in light of what Paul just said, this magical feature might just be neceesary for "buggy" ditroffs (is there any other type?).