🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <24703@alice.att.com> npn@alice.att.com (Nils-Peter Nelson) writes:
>
>
>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.

I did not complain that the number of combinations that
could be used in the .RS/.RF pairs is too small;
these two-character strings are just difficult to 
remember when needed again for re-referencing.

The solution offered might do the job, but obviously, 
it's not as painless as it might/should be.

A related question: what other structures in troff use
the \*( prefix?  If it's only the \*(Rf/.RS/.RF
construct, would it be difficult to assign variable-length
strings to it? (just a wild guess; I'm not a programmer). 

Tony
tony2@cc.bellcore.com