Re: [Groff] line break question

[Joerg van den Hoff]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:39:16AM +0100, Tadziu Hoffmann wrote:
> 
> > I can only track down this to the step where the `refer' ms-macros
> > are inserted (i.e. the `refer' output for my original document). 
> > the relevant modified excerpt from the latter is:
> [snip]
> 
> I think this has to do with the way ref*add-xxx and ref*field
> construct the reference entry as a series of "words" separated
> by spaces.  I guess there is no provision for having two fields
> "stick together" without a space in between, so this has been
> *faked* (gasp!) with the following construct:
> 
>   .de ref*add-N
>   .ref*field N \z( "" ")"
>   ..
> 
> Now, "\z( xyz" might appear to look like "(xyz" under some
> circumstances, but it's a poor substitute and certainly won't
> work at the end of a line.
> 
> My suggestion: the above sucks badly anyway (italic opening
> parenthesis and roman closing parenthesis (!?)), so I would
right you are. I not even noticed that.
> simply do away with all that fancy stuff and substitute
> 
>   .de ref*add-N
>   .ref*field N
>   ..
> 
> which also corresponds more to the style used by journals such
> as Nature and Physical Review.
if only all journals would agree to a single style...
> 
> If you absolutely want to prevent a linebreak between two fields
> I guess you need to redesign the ref*add and ref*field macros.

poor me. more often than not customizing `refer' output becomes a project of
it's own. I'm afraid for the average user (if there is such a thing with
`groff' :-)) wrestling with the macros is not an option. if only there were 
some kind of user frontend to the refer settings.

anyway, thanks a lot for cornering the culprit. for the time being I'll see
whether I can use the proposed approach ("no parenthesis, no problem").

joerg