🚀 go-pugleaf

> *Excerpts from ext.nn.comp.text: 30-Mar-89 {n,pt}roff with mm on suns Sid*
> *Cowles@lll-lcc.UUCP (940)*
> i would like very much to use memorandum macros with nroff and
> ptroff on a sun 4.  unfortunately, when i do, i get unusable page
> numbers.  the page numbers come out with about 102 leading zero's
> in spite of specifying .af P 1 before any page numbers are printed.
> the versions of mm that i have been trying are 10.108 and 11.47.
> i've noticed that the number register P has a size of 3 (using the
> .pm call).
This is a common problem. The -mm macros use the \gx (or \g(xx) escape sequence
to  return the format of register x (or xx). This request was introduced in the
PWB version of troff. Alas, it didn't make it in all versions of troff, so if
you use the mm macros with an old version of troff, you get this problem. If you
are using numerical format for the P register, you should wipe out the
occurrences of something on the line of

        .af P \\g<whatever>

from the macros. (My memory of this is somewhat fuzzy, but I think it happens
just once). If you still want to use roman numericals for page numbers, you
obviously have to do something else: Keep the format in a string, say Xy as in

        .ds Xy i

and do something on the line of

        .af P \\*(Xy

on  the appropriate places.

        jaap