Re: [Groff] MM's nested lists: AL inside BVL

[Ted Harding]

On 28-Jun-10 15:20:49, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Ted Harding:
>> That  --  the  asymmetry  --  is  also  my feeling
>> exactly! However, I think the  increment/decrement
>> operation is best left alone!  Consider:
> 
> So  you show a way to make Groff do what you want it
> to do, but my mind either inattentive  or  lazy  and
> therefore  prone  to  human mistakes, which makes me
> incline to "Safe" programming languages  (Pascal  in
> preference to C, for example). So I might even write
> some "Safe" macros if I  found  myself  bumping  too
> often into this kind of error:
> 
>    \" Common wrapper for safe assign, increment
>    \" and decrement operations, not to be used
>    \" directly.
>    .de cAS
>    .   nr \\$1 \\$2(\\$3)
>    ..
>    \" Safe assign
>    .de NR
>    .   cAS \\$1 "" \\$2
>    ..
>    .
>    .\" Decrement register $1 by value $2
>    .de DR
>    .   cAS \\$1 - \\$2
>    .
>    .\" Increment register $1 by value $2
>    ..
>    .de IR
>    .   cAS \\$1 + \\$2
>    ..
> 
> But  where  to  stop?  I might end up with a wrapper
> around groff...
> 
>> and, later: "When interpolated, a number  register
>> is  converted into decimal (default), decimal with
>> leading zeros, lower-case Roman, upper-case Roman,
>> lower-  case  sequential alphabetic, or upper-case
>> sequential alphabetic,  according  to  the  format
>> specified by 'af'."
> 
> I too thought about .af  when  saw  it  in  Tadziu's
> example.  My  idea  was  to  introduce a format that
> would expand into a value  in  parentheses,  but  it
> would  be  adding another dimenstion to formats, not
> just another format, which is wrong.
> 
>> And, while you're at it, you might as well  always
>> bracket it since the "+" prefix will still work as
>> before with the brackets,...
> 
> So all one needs to be happy is just to be aware  of
> the  feature  and  do  some extra writing to take it
> into account.
> 
> Anton

Exactly!
Ted.

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Date: 29-Jun-10                                       Time: 16:44:15
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