[bug #61710] [me] $v and $V are in the wrong namespace

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #18, bug #61710 (project groff):

> Any thoughts on comment #16?

Still pondering, in between falling down Roman numeral rabbit holes.  My
knee-jerk reaction is that of comment #2: -me handles all other type-sizing
matters by having the user set registers, so it's incongruous to do something
different for line spacing.

But I'm trying not to be reflexively wedded to the past (though -me's past and
present are pretty similar) and entertain new ways of doing things.  And the
five registers required to be strictly parallel to the type-size registers do
seem like overkill.

Still, even if this is done with a request, .vs wouldn't be my first choice,
as then it will do distinctly different things in -me documents than in plain
roff, which seems needlessly confusing when -me could simply invent a new name
for this macro.

Redefining .vs might also break some historical -me documents that call .vs
directly.  True, the -me manual never condoned the use of troff's .vs request,
so strictly conformant -me documents shouldn't use it, but in reality it was
safe in limited contexts, such as working around bug #60553.  (The workaround
I posted in that bug report goes to some effort to use only the approved -me
interface, but a more straightforward solution would temporarily call .vs
directly.)

And yes, I know -me already redefines .ll, which might seem to take the wind
out of this argument's sails.  But the proposed .vs redefinition would set
registers that -me would then use internally in many other macros, a situation
more potentially far-reaching than the .ll redefinition.  

> I noticed that you've been waiting
> for feedback from me much longer than I have on you,

No problem, there's nothing urgent here.  Even if nothing here changes before
1.23 goes out the door, the current behavior isn't causing any functional
problems, and can continue to work indefinitely.

For that matter, the two simplest ways to resolve this bug would be:

 * change no code, and document that $v and $V are exceptions to the general
rule about $ registers; or
 * change the names of $v and $V but nothing about how they work.

Redesign is a worthy objective, but since no one, including me, has had a
problem with the current functionality the whole time it's been around, maybe
we're overthinking this.  I dunno, I need to ponder that idea some more. :-)

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