Re: [Groff] poll: which macro packages are in common use / and why.

[Peter Schaffter]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2004, Klaus Robert Suetterlin wrote:
> I tried to identify the macro package that would fill my needs.
> These are mainly cross references, customisable headers and footers,
> bibliographic references (which can be done by use of external
> tools) and two column formatting.  Of mm, ms and mom, there seems to
> be only mm that has cross references.  ms seems to be quite far
> on the do it Yourself side of groff macros -- I'm not a typesetter
> or printer or macro-hacker and don't want to invent the wheel of
> page layout again, so I fear ms is not my way to go.

If it weren't for the cross reference requirement, mom would be
a good choice.  The tools for customising everything--including
headers and footers--are extensive, without requiring that you be a
typesetter or a macro-hacker.  And if you do decide that you want
to do some heavy-duty typesetting, or start playing around with
macros, mom makes the transition pretty easy.

However, no cross-reference facilities.  I've given the matter some
thought, but have yet to come up with a way of implementing them in
mom.  Posterior references aren't too much of a problem.  But
anterior references have me baffled.  Even with a "two-pass"
implementation (which I inherently dislike), there's always the
possibility that the addition of a page number to a tagged
reference will disrupt the formatting, resulting in a reference
that's off by one page.  And what's the good of automatic
cross-referencing if it isn't 100% reliable?

-- 
Peter Schaffter
Author of _The Schumann Proof_ (RendezVous Press, Canada)