[comp.text] marginal hacks with ditroff

stevens@hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens) (09/08/89)

I'm doing an index for a book using ditroff and the standard type
of index macro in the document (uses the .tm command to write
the arguments and page number to stderr, handling the case of being
in a diversion which Jaap posted a week or so ago).

But, I'd like to redefine the .ix macro for some runs so that it
prints the index terms in the right margin so that I can go through
the printed manuscript and see what terms are being indexed, and where.
Knuth shows an example of this in the TeX book, p. 415 (marginal hacks).
I can't, however, figure out an easy and good way to have ditroff do this.

One solution that kind of works is to print the index term using the
3-part title command (.tl).  In case there are multiple terms on an
output line, I horizontally space within the .tl string using the
.k register.  A problem with this, however, is that the .tl command
can trigger a bottom-of-the-page trap before the text line is output,
so the resulting document isn't exactly like it should be.

Does anyone have a better solution to this ?

	Richard Stevens
	Health Systems International, New Haven, CT
	   stevens@hsi.com
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