an macro package and bold printers

[Duane Morse]

I'm baffled. I've made an nroff table for a printer which can turn
bold face printing on and off (i.e., bdon and bdoff have the appropriate
strings in my nroff /usr/lib/term/tabXXX file). Yet when I make a
manual page using the an macros and -TXXX to specify the specific printer,
the .TH line, .SH line, etc., don't come out bold. Dumping the nroff output 
indicates that nroff wasn't even trying: my bdon and bdoff escape sequences are
not in the output. Nor does the output have the normal char-backspace-char
pattern. Yet, arguments after the .B macro are, in face, surrounded
by the bold-on/bold-off escape sequences for the printer. I've tried
a number of things, and the old way I can get the section headings
bold is to make bdon and bdoff null in tabXXX.

Is this a bug in nroff? A bug in the an macros? A misunderstanding
on my part? All three?

-- 

Duane Morse	...!noao!terak!anasazi!duane
(602) 870-3330