Re: memorandum macros (mm) in 1976/77 (was: an opinionated history of *roff macro packages)

[Damian McGuckin]

Branden,

On Thu, 6 Apr 2023, G. Branden Robinson wrote:

> It might be to Micha?'s original inquiry, though.  Why would someone
> choose mm(7) when ms(7) is simpler?

At the time, in the late 1970s, the School of Civil Engineering at UNSW 
choose MM over MS because (in a few words) at the time, it was slghtly 
more robust, had a few more features, and had better overall documentation

I can call and ask the guy who was the head of the committee what the full 
reasons were if you really need to know.

Also, a colleague and I had written an 80+ page tutorial on how to use a 
subset of MM with TBL and EQN that provided a graded learning experience 
in MM. That meant that there was a big learning hurdle for adopters. The 
feedback we got was that it was a pretty good learning tool. After people 
had mastered it, they found the jump to the full AT&T documentation was 
pretty painless.

Thanks - Damian

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