RE: [Groff] mom: Some follow-up questions

[Mats Broberg]

> The mom macros came into being primarily to serve the needs 
> of typesetters and non-technical writers.  I realized that 
> would be annoying to technical writers who liked mom but 
> needed greater functionality (floats and keeps, 
> cross-referencing, nested footnotes, etc.), but no more 
> annoying than, say, learning ms/mm/me only to discover that 
> they don't natively--or easily--provide the design flexbility 
> of mom.  Macro sets, it seems, are like any other
> app: the one you like inevitably doesn't have the thing you want. :)

Since I don't know much about groff yet, this may be a uninformed
question - but is it possible to use e.g. other listmembers' specific
macros for crossreferences together with mom?   I browsed the archives
and found out that e.g. Jon Snader has some xref macros.

> Which brings me to a question: is anyone on the list 
> interested in working with me on expanding mom?  So far, it's 
> been a one-man-band project, but I don't have the luxury of 
> developing that way any more.

Being a typographer and former printer, I'd be interested to come with
suggestions regarding typographic constructs, solutions and extensions
in and to mom. I have a long "typographer's wishlist" where I've written
down things & ideas emanating from the annoyance of working with
QuarkXPress, InDesign and Framemaker.

Can't help you with the actual writing of the macros, though! :(

Btw, I think I read somewhere that groff never ever hyphenates the last
word on a page. Is that true? I guess that makes the guys over at
comp.text.tex envious. There are quite a few threads about how to make
TeX & Children succeed with that...!

Best regards,
Mats Broberg