> As a *roff user since the mid-1970s I am all too aware that to be
> good at this you have to know and _understand_ a lot of details
> about the document models (as represented by the different macro
> collections: man, mm, mom, ms ...) and the fundamental commands,
> registers, etc. To do even the simplest document requires
> much-too-much expertise for the rank beginner.
Indeed.
> The other day I was thinking of creating, as a first step, a set of
> overlay macros for things like groff_mm (my macro package of choice)
> to ease the burden of learning and understanding it:
>
> .mm_AbstractStart .AS
> .mm_AbstractEnd .AE
> .mm_Approval .AV
> .mm_AuthorsTitle .AT
> .mm_Author .AU
> : :
> .mm_PageHeader .PH
> .mm_PageHeaderExit .PX
> .mm_Paragraph .P
> .mm_PictureStart .PS
> .mm_PictureEnd .PE
> : :
Since mm isn't intended to be used with any other main macro package,
I would omit the `mm_' prefix completely. Besides that, having
slightly longer but more verbose commands are a good thing. It's
really simple to provide such a `front end' by yourself; simply use
the `.als' request for that purpose:
.als AbstractStart AS
.als AbstractEnd AE
.als Approval AV
.als AuthorsTitle AT
.als Author AU
: :
.als PageHeader PH
.als PageHeaderExit PX
.als Paragraph P
.als PictureStart PS
.als PictureEnd PE
: :
Werner
