My view is that mm(7) is better suited for people who either (a) needed
to write AT&T internal corporate memoranda in divisions of the company
where failure to adhere perfectly to the prescribed stylesheets
resulted in encumbrances on one's career progression; or (b) greeted the
prospect of writing and maintaining their own macros with fear.
Hmmm.
At the time we adopted it where I worked in the late 70s, users could
format their technical reports and journal papers with 'mm' using less
macro calls than were needed if using 'ms'. We had a very diverse user
population, from departmental secretaries through to heads of department
(full of engineers).
John Mashey commented to me a few years ago that it allowed more style
sheet parameterization. He also noted:
MM was apparently the most stressful macro package, as we often
found nroff bugs no one else did. Joe Ossanna was thankfully very
quick at fixing them.
Doug might have a different take.
Later - Damian
