[net.text] pic, -me macros, diversions, and guards

padpowell@wateng.UUCP (PAD Powell) (02/21/85)

In a previous article,  I mentioned that diversions "compounded"
indents, and the only way to prevent this was to put "guarded" .in 0
commands in the text.  I said that
.in 0
\&.in 0
was a guard sequence.  Well, as lebenty-leben people have pointed out,
it doesn't work.  Actually, this is just part of it, as this does the
guarding for "macro" inclusions only.  To get diversion quards, you need
to do:
\.in 0
The first backslash is eaten during the diversion step.
When the diversion is expanded,  you get a .in 0 command.
This works only if you know the level of diversions you have.  The set of
macros I posed has a
fairly bombproof method of expanding them at actual
diversion output time.

Patrick ("Just small second degree burns so far") Powell