🚀 go-pugleaf

Correspondent would like "long register names."
Sorry, but the "twoness" of troff is pervasive.
There are 96 printing characters (not all of which
can appear in string names; eg I would't try backslash)
and you can use one or two char names, so 96*96+96
appears to be the limit.
The way most people solve this is to append to
a diversinon with your own personal "magic cookie"
and then use a companion awk program.
For example: ***REF1 <contents of reference 1>
Of course, this means you need 2 passes, but you
always need two passes due to the potential for
forward referencing. You then insert your simple
awk program between the 2 passes.