Re: A weird problem with mm title page macros

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Oliver,

At 2023-11-21T19:49:09+0100, Oliver Corff wrote:
> I tried to play with 4.MT by copying and renaming it as 6.MT and
> calling .MT 6, but then the result is as if I had no .MT call at all.
> Strange.

As weird as it seems, that's documented.

     MT [type [addressee]]
             Select memorandum type.  These correspond to formats used
             by AT&T Bell Laboratories, where the mm package was
             initially developed, affecting the document layout.  Some
             of these included a cover page with a caption categorizing
             the document.  groff mm uses type to construct the file
             name /home/branden/groff-HEAD/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/mm/
             type.MT and load it with the mso request.  Memorandum types
             0 to 5 are supported; any other value of type is mapped to
             type 6.  If type is omitted, 0 is implied.  addressee sets
             a string analogous to one used by AT&T cover sheet macros
             that are not implemented in groff mm.

             type   Description
             0      normal memorandum; no caption
             1      captioned “MEMORANDUM FOR FILE”
             2      captioned “PROGRAMMER’S NOTES”
             3      captioned “ENGINEER’S NOTES”
             4      released paper
             5      external letter

             See COVER for a more flexible cover sheet mechanism.

(Read something appropriate for your system where that filespec
appears.)

Jörgen Hägg seemed pretty intent on steering people to the `COVER`
macro.  I think he intended groff mm's implementations of `LT` and `MT`
only for reproduction of historical AT&T documents (or those that made
no demands that DWB mm couldn't satisfy).

Regards,
Branden

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