Re: [Groff] What should me/mm/ms.. be for?

[Clarke Echols]

Jaap-Jan Boor wrote:
> 
> >
> > Hi Folks,
> >
> > I'd like to appeal to the extensive knowledge and
> > historical experience of readers for a possible
> > anzswer to a question which has intrigued me ever
> > since I have been using troff/groff.
> >
> > The main macro packages for cocument formatting ared
> > 'man', 'me', 'mm', 'ms'.

My first encounter with 'mm' was in 1985.  The original AT&T document
I was working from called it "Manuscript Macros".  'man' is specifically
for the man pages.  I assume 'me' is a Berkeley invention, probably
derived from "Manuscript Extended" in the manner of 'ex' being 'extended
editor' built from the original 'ed' from AT&T.  I don't know that for
certain, but if one carefully compared the actual macro files, it might
become more evident whether or not that is a fact.  'vi' was a "visual
interactive" enhancement from 'ex'.  As for the origins of 'ms', Narain
Gehani from Bell Labs, in his book "Document Formatting and Typesetting
on the Unix System" (1986) on page 310-311 describes 'ms' as a
"high-level formatting facility similar to the mm package".  It has a
few macro names that are the same as 'mm', but others are considerably
different.

Clarke Echols