Re: Re: [Groff] need advice on choosing a macro

[Alejandro Lopez-Valencia]

At 03:06 p.m. 29/01/2003 -0500, address@hidden wrote:

> > > > How does one get -ms to not have a cover page or
> > > > document header?
> > >
> > > Don't use cover page macros and you won't get a
> > > cover page. :-)
> >
> > So the GNU version of -ms doesn't barf when no cover
> > page macros are invoked? Nice. This probably should be
> > documented, since readers of documentation for UNIX
> > -ms might not know otherwise.
>
> It's documented. See groff_ms(7) for groff versions 1.18 and later:
>
>    The simplest documents can begin with a paragraph macro
>    and consist of text separated by paragraph macros or
>    even blank lines.
>
> If you have an earlier version of groff, you ought to upgrade just to get 
> the improved ms manpage. ;-)


BTW Larry,

Last weekend I realized there is a glitch in the groff_ms(7). I didn't 
notice it before because I rather call high ASCII chars by their encoding 
names instead of the accent macros[1-2], but I had to look into someone 
else's code. There is no mention of the composite macros! E.g.,

\*Q     doublequoteleft
\*R     doublequoteright

and other niceties defined in module acc :)

[1] The results of the accent macros in typesetter quality output (PS, DVI, 
PCL4) is ghastly (to put it mildly). But there is no point in discussing taste.

[2] BTW, these accent macros are defined in mm as well, but with the older 
not as good definitions, instead of those used by the .AM wrapper macro. I 
wonder if it would be a good idea to use in mm the ms definitions as 
provided by .AM. I could submit a patch if Werner wants...