Re: [Groff] man pages for macro packages

[Clarke Echols]

Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> Well, the names `man', `ms', `mm' make sense: `manual', `manuscript',
> `memo'.  I think they have been deliberately chosen to coincide with
> the -m command line option.  So the leading `m' doesn't stand for
> `macro' at all.

I must disagree with your conclusion.  The nroff man page (HP-UX 10.0),
which is derived from the original AT&T page documents the -m option as
follows:

-m<name>  Precede the input files with the non-compiled (ASCII text)
          macro file /usr/lib/nls/LANG/tmac/tmac.name

I would suggest that the <name> has been selected to eliminate the
confusion that would come from typing -mman or -mmm or -mms rather than
-m not referring to 'macro' at all.  Elan's Eroff manual uses a very
similar description for the -m option in their nroff(1) and troff(1)
man pages.

Clarke