🚀 go-pugleaf

You can use expressions inside \h constructs (and most other
things that require numbers). For example, pic generates lots
of lines that say things like

\h'-0.0m'\v'0.2m'\h'-\w'text'u/2u'text\h'-\w'text'u/2u'

Breaking this up gives

  Move right 0 :-)                        \h'-0.0m'
  Move down 0.2 m                         \v'0.2m'
  Move left half the width of "text"      \h'-\w'text'u/2u'
  Print the letters t e x t               text
  Move left half the width of "text"      \h'-\w'text'u/2u'

Are you sure that your problem wasn't due to the fact that

        \h'8*\w' 'u'
means   \h'8m*\w' 'u'   because the default unit for \h is ems?

BTW, pic knows that strings like "doesn't" can't be delimited by
quote, so it switches to \(ts (yes, you can use special
characters as delimiters). If you really want it to die badly,
use a string such as "it's \(ts, the sigma variant!"....
-- 

William Roberts                 ARPA: liam@cs.qmc.ac.uk
Queen Mary College              UUCP: liam@qmc-cs.UUCP
LONDON, UK