NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/comp/text/1616

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-24 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!ukma!bogus.sura.net!howland.reston.ans.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uunet.ca!ecicrl!clewis
From: [e-mail] (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: extended \*(xx sequence for .RS/.RF; is it possible?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 24 Jan 93 16:10:48 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 29

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (gozdz,antoni s) writes:
|I use extensively automatic reference processing
|in troff/Eroff. However, the standard implementation
|allows one to use only a two-character string to name the
|reference (I think that's the way troff was set up to
|recognize the \*( sequence, right?).

|I'd like to use longer, more descriptive strings,
|e.g., \*(weber91a, whose length could be either
|constant (at least 6 characters) or length.

|Another, related question: is there an internal limit
|in troff to the number of references a single document
|may have (like the number or registers etc.)?

Most versions of troff (probably including eroff) only support 2
character string names, so you're basically out of luck using the .RS/.RF
mechanism.

However, you can use "refer", which essentially bypasses all these
limits, and allows you to say something like [weber91] in your document.
"refer" is a standard part of DWB, don't know about eroff.  If you
don't have refer, you could probably pick up "grefer", which is
a part of groff.  While you need C++ to compile groff, you may be
able to obtain a pre-compiled binary of grefer for your system.
--
Chris Lewis; [e-mail]; Phone: Canada 613 832-0541
Psroff 3.0 info: [e-mail]
Ferret list: [e-mail]