On 28-Jun-10 15:20:49, Anton Shepelev wrote: > Ted Harding: >> That -- the asymmetry -- is also my feeling >> exactly! However, I think the increment/decrement >> operation is best left alone! Consider: > > So you show a way to make Groff do what you want it > to do, but my mind either inattentive or lazy and > therefore prone to human mistakes, which makes me > incline to "Safe" programming languages (Pascal in > preference to C, for example). So I might even write > some "Safe" macros if I found myself bumping too > often into this kind of error: > > \" Common wrapper for safe assign, increment > \" and decrement operations, not to be used > \" directly. > .de cAS > . nr \\$1 \\$2(\\$3) > .. > \" Safe assign > .de NR > . cAS \\$1 "" \\$2 > .. > . > .\" Decrement register $1 by value $2 > .de DR > . cAS \\$1 - \\$2 > . > .\" Increment register $1 by value $2 > .. > .de IR > . cAS \\$1 + \\$2 > .. > > But where to stop? I might end up with a wrapper > around groff... > >> and, later: "When interpolated, a number register >> is converted into decimal (default), decimal with >> leading zeros, lower-case Roman, upper-case Roman, >> lower- case sequential alphabetic, or upper-case >> sequential alphabetic, according to the format >> specified by 'af'." > > I too thought about .af when saw it in Tadziu's > example. My idea was to introduce a format that > would expand into a value in parentheses, but it > would be adding another dimenstion to formats, not > just another format, which is wrong. > >> And, while you're at it, you might as well always >> bracket it since the "+" prefix will still work as >> before with the brackets,... > > So all one needs to be happy is just to be aware of > the feature and do some extra writing to take it > into account. > > Anton
Exactly! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 29-Jun-10 Time: 16:44:15 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
