>> [..] I think it's not a bad idea to stay with this scheme for >> orthogonality: >> >> .XXX >> >> can be handled by a preprocessor, while
>> >> .<whitespace>XXX >> >> is something only `troff' should process. I'd put consistency before (largely imagined) orthogonality. I'm sure that had it been brought to the attention of the Unix lab back in the day, one of us would have fixed it. Moreover, pic DOES recognize all troff requests properly, regardless of whitespace, except for .PS and .PE! Doug
