Re: [Groff] -mm formatting macros question

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Marisa,

Marisa Giancarla wrote on Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 11:03:03PM -0700:

> This should be easy - what are the macros in -mm

-mm is a macro set.  It is intended to make entering roff(7) code
easier.  That implies that it doesn't need to contain macros for
things that are already easy with low-level roff(7) requests, as
long as these requests don't interfere with the inner workings of
the -mm macros.

All you ask can be done easily with the following roff(7) requests:

> that end a line early,

.br

> and that put a blank line between two paragraphs.

.sp

unless the -mm .P macro already adds enough space at a specific
position for your taste.  You can use the \n(Ps number register
to adjust vertical paragraph spacing to your needs.

You could also use the -mm .SP macro, but it doesn't seem to do
much more than plain .sp, except for the effect that multiple .SP
in a row don't add up, while multiple .sp do, which may or may not
be an improvement depending on context, but probably not very
relevant unless you write your own macros on top of -mm.

Also note that .VERBON has an option to add a line before the
verbose text, just in case that's the place where you need it.

> Is .BR one of them?

Not at all, according to groff_mm(7), it's an alternating font macro,
fomatting its odd args in bold and its even macros in roman.

Yours,
  Ingo