Re: [Groff] Proposed revised START macro for mom

[Peter Schaffter]

James --

On Wed, Jan 08, 2003, James J. Ramsey wrote:
> Internal strings like $TITLE_FAM and $TITLE_FT size
> are easy for the user to replace with absolute values.
> However, it is not sensible to replace defined strings
> like $CHAPTER, $CHAPTER_STRING and $CHAPTER_TITLE with
> absolute string values, since the values of those
> strings should change with every invocation of the
> .START macro. Therefore, defined strings like
> $CHAPTER, $CHAPTER_STRING and $CHAPTER_TITLE, or
> equivalents/aliases of them, should be earmarked for
> external use.

Generally, users set $CHAPTER, $CHAPTER_STRING, and the new
$CHAPTER_TITLE with the macros .CHAPTER, .CHAPTER_STRING, and
.CHAPTER_TITLE.  In cases where these strings differ from what the user
wants to go in page headers/footers, the macros to define the left,
centre and right parts of headers/footers are used.  Is there an
advantage I'm not seeing to setting, say, the chapter string with

    .ds $CHAPTER_STRING <whatever>

instead of

    .CHAPTER_STRING <whatever>

in a document?

-- 
        +-----------------------------------------------------------+
        | "For-profit medical care is the Hippocratic equivalent of |
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PTPi
Peter Schaffter
31, Curé-André-Préseault
Appt. 22
Gatineau (Québec)
CANADA  J8T 6E4

A confirmed GNU/Linuxer. Sorry, I don't do Windows.