🚀 go-pugleaf

I have been having a problem with the .ip (indented paragraph) macro.
What I would like to do in a list where I have a bunch of hanging tags
such as "First:", "Second:", etc., in order to get the proper indentation
on the indented paragraphs, is to have {n,t}roff calculate the proper
indentation using the width operator \w. It seems that the proper
invocation (assuming "Second:" was the longest tag) would be:

.ip First: \w'Second: '

but when I try this, the result is a funny string attached to the
end of the preceding text item, such as in the following example:

<random text>291.@p 150u

in this case. This looks like it's coming from the body of the .ip
macro, which calls the internal -me macro .@p just after it identifies
the existence of a hanging tag and sets up a number register containing
the indentation for tags if it is given.

I have tried a few variations: an extra backslash before the width operator,
a unit designation after the second argument, enclosing the first
argument in quotes; all result in the same obnoxious string. Does
anybody out there have a solution, or am I (horrors!) going to have
to make a special case out of the thing?

                  ____                  Bill Laubenheimer
      ___       /      \       ___      UC-Berkeley Computer Science
     /   \     |  o  o  |     /   \     ucbvax!wildbill
------+++----------()----------+++------
          ...Killjoy was here!