Re: troff Memorandum Macros documentation derived from the paper "MM - Memorandum Macros"

[Damian McGuckin]

Nate,

On Mon, 9 Aug 2021, Nate Bargmann wrote:

> http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/mac/a_ux/aux_2.0/030-0761-A_AUX_Text_Processing_Tools_1990.pdf

Thanks for that little gem. Thank you Apple.
> as I was looking for a letterhead recipe.  The example shown in Chapter 
> 2 of the book worked flawlessly with groff 1.22.4 on Debian 11, so I 
> have tilted back in favor of MM now having created my own letterhead in 
> MM.

I wish I had written it. Quite useful.

I tend to use embedded Postscript to help with letterheads if I need 
graphics or color or some weird font.

> What I have been able to ascertain is that MM was an evolution and
> extension of MS by Bell Labs as both originated there.

Hmmm. Not sure. I think young Doug was there when they both started and 
could enlighten us. I am talking about the MM that was available in PWB 
UNIX. It dates from 1977. I thought that the MS paper was dated 1978. I 
started using in 1979 so they were both available at that time. So the 
true history predates me. As I said, Doug would be the authority on it.

> I find 'DT' referenced in the description of the ISODATE macro and 
> nowhere else in the page (groff 1.22.4; the string is completely removed 
> in the Git HEAD of contrib/mm/groff_mm.7.man), yet it works just fine.

It is defined in

        m.tmac
as
        .als DT cov*new-date

> IMO it should be included in the "strings used in mm" subsection.  Is
> there a reason why it is not and why its mention has been removed
> completely rather than expanded?

You are so right. Looks like a manual page error.

> One drawback to MM is the lack of native super/subscript macros. 
> However, I lifted the superscript formulas from s.tmac and include their 
> definitions at the top of my letterhead file, appropriately named 
> SUP/SUPX as borrowed from MOM.  ;-)

Why not use the preprocessor eqn(1) which means using definining the
delimiter at the start of the document with

        .EN
        delim ##
        .EN

at the start of your document and then use (say)

        #x sup 2#

within the text.

Stay safe - Damian

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