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<title>What is mom?</title>
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<a name="INTRO">
<h1 align="center"><u>WHAT IS MOM?</u></h1>
</a>
<a href="#INTRO_INTRO">Who is mom meant for?</a>
<br>
<a href="#INTRO_TYPESETTING">Typesetting with mom</a>
<br>
<a href="#INTRO_DOCPROCESSING">Document processing with mom</a>
<br>
<a href="#INTRO_PHILOSOPHY">Mom's philosophy</a>
<br>
<a href="#INTRO_DOCUMENTATION">A note on mom's documentation</a>
<br>
<a href="#MACRO_ARGS">How to read macro arguments</a>
<h2><a name="INTRO_INTRO"><u>Who is mom meant for?</u></a></h2>
<strong>Mom</strong> ("my own macros", "my other
macros", "maximum overdrive macros"...) is a macro set for
groff, designed to format documents for PostScript output.
She's aimed at three kinds of users:
<br>
<ol>
<li>typesetters who suspect groff might be "the right
tool for the job" but who are
frustrated/intimidated by groff's terse, geeky,
not-always-typographically-intuitive
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_PRIMITIVES">primitives</a>;
<br>
<li>non-scientific writers (novelists, short story writers,
journalists, students) who just want their work to
look good;
<br>
<li>newbies to computer typesetting, document processing, or
groff who need a well-documented macro set to help them get
started.
</ol>
<p>
As might be infered from the above, <strong>mom</strong> is two macro
packages in one: a set of typesetting macros, and a set of document
processing macros. The typesetting macros govern the physical
aspects of page layout and provide sane, comprehensible control over
typographic refinements. The document processing macros let you focus
on a document's content and logical structure without worrying about
typesetting or page layout at all.
<p>
Because <strong>mom</strong> provides both typesetting and document
processing macros, it's safe to say she blurs the distinction
between document processing and document design. While her basic
document design comes with pretty spiffy defaults (okay -- change
"spiffy" to "typographically professional"),
you can easily redesign nearly every element of a document:
title information, page headers and footers, page numbering, heads,
subheads, footnotes... The list goes on. And should you need precise
typographic control over elements in a document that fall outside the
range of <strong>mom</strong>'s document markup tags, you don't have
to read up on groff
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_PRIMITIVES">primitives</a>
in order to accomplish what you want; the typesetting macros take
care of that.
<a name="INTRO_TYPESETTING">
<h2><u>Typesetting with mom</u></h2>
</a>
<strong>Mom</strong>'s typesetting macros control the basic elements of
type: margins, line length, type family, font, point size, linespacing,
and so on. In addition, they allow you to move around on the page
horizontally and vertically, and to set up tabs, indents, and columns.
Finally, they let you adjust such typographic details as justification
style, letter spacing, word spacing, hyphenation, and kerning.
<p> In terms of typographic control, these macros resemble the
commands used on dedicated typesetting computers like Compugraphics and
Linotronics. Most of them simply give access to groff's typesetting
primitives in a way that's consistent and easy to use. A few of
them (tabs and indents, for example) handle fundamental typesetting
requirements in ways radically different from groff primitives.
<p>
With <strong>mom</strong>'s typesetting macros, you can, if you wish,
create individual output pages that you design from the ground up.
Provided you have not signalled to <strong>mom</strong> that you
want document processing (via the
<a href="docprocessing.html#START">START</a>
macro; see below), every macro is a literal command that remains in
effect until you modify it or turn it off. This means that if you
want to create flyers, document covers, surveys, tabulated forms,
curricula vitae and so on, you may do so in the good old-fashioned
way: one step at a time with complete control over every element on
the page.
<p>
Years of reading various mailing lists dealing with computer
typesetting (groff, TeX, and friends) have convinced me that no progam
can ever replace the human eye and human input when it comes to high
quality typesetting. As of this writing, a thread on the subject of
"micro typography" in groff has been going on for nearly a
month. The reason for the lengthy thread is obvious; words and
punctuation on the printed page are too variable, too fluid, to be
rendered flawlessly by any algorithm, no matter how clever. (For
whatever it's worth, a similar problem exists with engraving musical
scores by computer.)
<p>
<strong>Mom</strong> does not try to solve the problems posed by
things like hanging punctuation, left-margin adjustments for those
annoying "space-y" upper case letters like T and W, and
so on. She merely tries to provide tools that allow knowledgeable
typesetters to come up with solutions to these problems
in ways that are somewhat easier and more intuitive than manipulating
groff at the
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_PRIMITIVES">primtive</a>
level. As a professional typesetter of more than two decades, and a
writer, I have encountered few situations that cannot be handled by
<strong>mom</strong>'s typesetting macros.
<p>
<strong>Author's note:</strong> One area where groff itself needs
serious rethinking is in the matter of an algorithm that takes into
account both word AND letter spacing when
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_JUST">justifying</a>
lines. At present, only word spacing is adjusted, requiring what I
consider an unnecessary amount of user intervention whenever
letter spacing is required.
<a name="INTRO_DOCPROCESSING">
<h2><u>Document processing with mom</u></h2>
</a>
<strong>Mom</strong>'s document processing macros let you format
documents without having to worry about the typographic details.
In this respect, <strong>mom</strong> is similar to other groff macro
packages, as well as to html and LaTeX. Where <strong>mom</strong>
differs is in the degree of control you have over the look and
placement of the various elements of a document. For example, if you
don't want your heads underlined, or you want them bigger/smaller,
or you'd prefer them to be in a different font, or you'd rather they
were flush left instead of centered, you can make the changes easily
and have them apply to the whole document. Temporary and one-off
changes are easy, too.
<p>
<strong>Mom</strong> has some nifty features other macro sets
don't provide. For example, you can switch between draft-style and
final-copy output. If you regularly make submissions to publishers
and editors who insist on "typewritten, double-spaced," there's a
special macro --
<a href="docprocessing.html#PRINTSTYLE">PRINTSTYLE TYPEWRITE</a>
-- that changes typeset documents into ones that would make your
high-school typing teacher proud. Footnotes, multiple columns,
recto/verso printing and user designable headers and footers are also
part of the fun.
<a name="INTRO_PHILOSOPHY">
<h2><u>Mom's philosophy</u></h2>
</a>
Formatting documents should be easy, from soup to nuts. Writers need
to focus on what they're writing, not on how it looks. From the
moment you fire up an editor to the moment you add "FINIS"
to your opus, nothing should interfere with the flow of your words.
The commands needed to format your work should be easy to remember,
comprehensible, and stand out well from the text. There shouldn't
be too much clutter. Your documents should be as readable inside a
text editor as they are on the printed page.
<p>
Unfortunately, in computerland, "easy,"
"comprehensible," and "readable" often mean
"you're stuck with what you're get." No document formatting
system can give you exactly what you want all the time, every time.
Documents, it seems, always need to be tweaked, either to satisfy a
typographic whim or to clarify some aspect of their content.
<p>
Groff has traditionally solved the problem of formatting vs. tweaking
by requiring users of the common macro packages (mm, ms, me and their
offspring) to resort to groff
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_PRIMITIVES">primitives</a>
and
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_INLINES">inline escapes</a>
for their special typesetting needs. Not to put too fine a point on
it, groff primitives tend toward the abstruse, and most inline escapes
are about as readable in-line as an encrypted password. This does
not make for happy-camper writers, who either find themselves stuck
with document formatting style they don't really like, or are forced to
learn groff from the ground up -- a daunting task, to say the least.
<p>
<strong>Mom</strong> aims to make creating documents a simple matter,
but with no corresponding loss of user control. The document
processing macros provide an excellent set of defaults, but if
something is not to your liking, you can change it. And in combination
with the typesetting macros, you have all the tools you need to
massage passages and tweak pages until they look utterly professional.
<p>
One rarely hears the word "user interface" in conjunction
with document processing. Since the user formatting takes place
inside a text editor, little thought is given to the look and feel
of the formatting commands. <strong>Mom</strong> attempts to rectify
this by providing users with a consistent, readable "coding"
style. Most of the macros (especially in the document processing set)
have humanly-readable names. Not only does this speed up learning
the macros, it makes the sense of what's going on in a document,
typographically and structurally, easier to decipher.
<p>
<strong>Mom</strong> does not try to be all things to all people.
In contrast to the normal groff philosophy, she does not try to
produce output that looks good no matter where it's displayed.
She's designed for printed output, although with
<a href="#PRINTSTYLE">PRINTSTYLE TYPEWRITE</a>
she produces acceptable terminal copy. She makes no attempt to be
compatible with older versions of troff. And she remains largely
untested with the groff preprocessors (tbl, pic, eqn, etc.)
<p>
One special feature in <strong>mom</strong>'s design is the attention
she pays to aligning the bottom margins of every page. Nothing screams
"shoddy" in typeset documents louder than bottom margins
that wander, or, in typesetter jargon, "hang." There are,
of course, situations where whitespace at the bottom of a page may
be desirable (for example, you wouldn't want a head to appear at the
bottom of the page without some text underneath it), but in all cases
where hanging bottom margins can be avoided, <strong>mom</strong> does
avoid them, by clever adjustments to leading ("line spacing")
and the spacing between different elements on the page.
<a name="INTRO_DOCUMENTATION">
<h2><u>A note on mom's documentation</u></h2>
</a>
Writing documentation is tough, no doubt about it. One is never
quite sure of the user's level of expertise. Is s/he new to the
application, new to its underlying protocols and programs, new to
the operating system, new to computers? At some point, one has to
decide who the documentation is for. Making the wrong decision can
mean the difference between a program that gets used and a program
that gets tossed.
<p>
<strong>Mom</strong>'s documentation assumes users know their way
around GNU/Linux. It further assumes they at least know what groff
is, even if they don't know much about it. Lastly, it assumes that
everyone -- groff newbies and experts alike -- learns faster from
a few well-placed examples than from manpage-style reference docs.
What <strong>mom</strong>'s documentation doesn't assume is that
you know everything -- not about groff, not about typesetting,
not about document processing. Even experts have odd lacunae in
their knowledge base. Therefore, whenever I suspect that a term
or procedure will cause head scratching, I offer an explanation.
And when explanations aren't enough, I offer examples.
<a name="CANONICAL"></a>
<p>
The canonical reference materials for groff are <strong>cstr54</strong>
(a downloadable PostScript copy of which is available
<a href="http://www.kohala.com/start/troff/">here</a>)
and the troff manpages. I've tried to avoid reiterating them, however,
in a few places, this has proved impossible. Be forewarned: I have
no qualms about sidestepping excrutiating completeness about groff
usage; I'm more concerned with getting <strong>mom</strong> users up
and running. <em>Mea culpa.</em>
<p>
<strong>Note:</strong> <strong>Mom</strong>'s macro file
(om.tmac) is heavily commented. Each macro is preceded by a
description of its arguments, function, and usage, which may
give you information in addition to what's contained in this
documentation.
<a name="MACRO_ARGS">
<h3><u>How to read macro arguments</u></h3>
</a>
<p>
The concise descriptions of macros in this documentation typically
look like this:
<blockquote>
Macro: <strong>NAME</strong> <var>arguments</var>
</blockquote>
<var>arguments</var> lists the macro's arguments using conventions that
should be familiar to anyone who has ever read a manpage. Briefly:
<p>
<ol>
<li>Macro arguments are separated from each other by spaces.
<li>If an argument is surrounded by chevrons
( < > ), it's a description of the argument,
not the argument itself.
<li>If an argument begins with or is surrounded by double-quotes, the
double quotes MUST be included in the argument.
<li>If the user has a choice between several arguments, each of the
choices is separated by the pipe character ( | ),
which means "or."
<li>Arguments that are optional are surrounded by square brackets.
<li><off> in an argument list means that any argument
turns the macro off.
</ol>
<a name="TOGGLE_MACRO"><h3><u>Toggle macros</u></h3></a>
<p>
Some macros don't require an argument. They simply start something.
When you need to turn them off, the same macro with <em>any</em>
argument will do the trick. That's right: ANY argument. This permits
choosing whatever works for you: OFF, END, QUIT, DONE, Q, X... Hell,
it could even be I_LOVE_MOM.
<p>
Since these macros toggle things on and off, the argument list
simply reads
<blockquote>
<var>toggle</var>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<h3>Example 1: an argument requiring double-quotes</h3>
<blockquote>
Macro: <strong>TITLE</strong> <var>"<title of document>"</var>
</blockquote>
The required argument to <strong>TITLE</strong> is the title of your
document. Since it's surrounded by double-quotes, you must
include them in the argument, like this:
<p>
<pre>
.TITLE "My Pulitzer Novel"
</pre>
<h3>Example 2: a macro with required and optional arguments</h3>
<blockquote>
Macro: <strong>TAB_SET</strong> <var><tab #> <indent> <length> [ L | R | C | J [ QUAD ] ]</var>
</blockquote>
The first required argument is a number that identifies the tab (say,
"3"). The second required argument is an indent from the left margin
(say, 6 picas). The third required argument is the length of the tab
(say, 3 picas). Therefore, at a minimum, when using this macro,
you would enter:
<p>
<pre>
.TAB_SET 3 6P 3P
</pre>
The remaining two arguments are optional. The first is a single
letter, either L, R, C or J. The second, which is itself optional
after L, R, C or J, is the word QUAD. Therefore, depending on
what additional information you wish to pass to the macro,
you could enter:
<p>
<pre>
.TAB_SET 3 6P 3P L
or
.TAB_SET 3 6P 3P L QUAD
</pre>
<a name="TOGGLE_EXAMPLE"><h3>Example 3: a sample toggle macro:</h3></a>
<blockquote>
Macro: <strong>QUOTE</strong> <var>toggle</var>
</blockquote>
<strong>QUOTE</strong> begins a section of quoted text in a document
and doesn't require an argument. When the quote's finished,
you have to tell <strong>mom</strong> it's done.
<p>
<pre>
.QUOTE
So runs my dream, but what am I?
An infant crying in the night
An infant crying for the light
And with no language but a cry.
.QUOTE OFF
</pre>
Alternatively, you could have turned the quote off with END, or
X, or something else.
<p>
<hr>
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