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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
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<title>Using mom</title>
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<a name="TOP"></a>
<p>
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</p>
<a name="USING"><h1 align="center"><u>Using mom</u></h1></a>
<p>
<a href="#USING_INTRO">Introduction</a>
<br/>
<a href="#USING_MACROS">Inputting macros</a>
<br/>
<a href="#USING_INVOKING">Invoking groff</a>
<br/>
<a href="#USING_PREVIEWING">Previewing documents</a>
</p>
<hr/>
<h2><a name="USING_INTRO"><u>Introduction</u></a></h2>
<p>
As explained in the section
<a href="intro.html#INTRO">What is mom?</a>,
<strong>mom</strong> can be used in two ways: for straight
typesetting or for document processing. The difference between
the two is that in straight typesetting, every macro is a literal
typesetting instruction that determines precisely how text
following it will look. Document processing, on the other hand,
uses markup "tags" (e.g. <kbd>.PP</kbd> for paragraphs,
<kbd>.HEAD</kbd> for heads, <kbd>.FOOTNOTE</kbd> for footnotes,
etc.) that make a lot of typesetting decisions automatically.
</p>
<p>
You tell <strong>mom</strong> that you want to use the document
processing macros with the
<a href="docprocessing.html#START">START</a>
macro, explained below. After <strong>START</strong>,
<strong>mom</strong> determines the appearance of text following
the markup tags automatically, although you, the user, can easily
change how <strong>mom</strong> interprets the tags. This gives you
nearly complete control over document design. In addition, the
typesetting macros, in combination with document processing, let you
meet all sorts of typesetting needs that just can't be covered by
"one macro fits all" markup tags.
</p>
<a name="USING_MACROS"><h2><u>How to input mom's macros</u></h2></a>
<p>
Regardless of which way you use <strong>mom</strong>, the
following apply.
</p>
<ol>
<li>
You need a good text editor for inputting
<strong>mom</strong> files.
<p>
I cannot recommend highly enough that you use an
editor that lets you write syntax highlighting
rules for <strong>mom</strong>'s macros and
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_INLINES">inline escapes</a>.
I use the vi clone called elvis, and find it a pure
joy in this regard. Simply colourizing macros and
inlines to half-intensity can be enough to make text stand
out clearly from formatting commands.
</p>
</li>
<li>
All <strong>mom</strong>'s macros begin with a period
(dot) and must be entered in upper case (capital)
letters.
</li>
<li>
Macro
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_ARGUMENTS">arguments</a>
are separated from the macro itself by spaces. Multiple
arguments to the same macro are separated from each
other by spaces. Any number of spaces may be used. All
arguments to a macro must appear on the same line as the
macro.
</li>
<li>
Any argument (except a
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_STRINGARGUMENT">string argument</a>)
that is not a digit must be entered in upper case
(capital) letters.
</li>
<li>
Any argument that requires a plus or minus sign must
have the plus or minus sign prepended to the argument
with no intervening space (e.g. <kbd>+2, -4</kbd>).
</li>
<li>
Any argument that requires a
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_UNITOFMEASURE">unit of measure</a>
must have the unit appended directly to the argument, with
no intervening space (e.g. <kbd>4P, .5i, 2v</kbd>).
</li>
<li>
<a href="definitions.html#TERMS_STRINGARGUMENT">String arguments</a>,
in the sense that the term is used in this manual, must
be surrounded by double-quotes ("text of
string"). Multiple string arguments are separated
from each other by spaces (each argument surrounded by
double-quotes, of course).
</li>
<li>
If a string argument, as entered in your text editor,
becomes uncomfortably long (i.e. runs longer than the
visible portion of your screen or window), you may break
it into two or more lines by placing the backslash
character (<kbd>\</kbd>) at the ends of lines to break
them up, like this:
<pre>
.SUBTITLE "An In-Depth Consideration of the \
Implications of Forty-Two as the Meaning of Life, \
The Universe, and Everything"
</pre>
</li>
</ol>
<p>
It's important that formatted documents be easy to read/interpret
when you're looking at them in a text editor. One way to achieve
this is to group macros that serve a similar purpose together, and
separate them from other groups of macros with a blank comment
line. In groff, that's done with <kbd>\#</kbd> on a line by itself.
Consider the following, which is a template for starting the chapter
of a book.
<pre>
.TITLE "My Pulitzer Novel"
.AUTHOR "Joe Blow"
.CHAPTER 1
\#
.DOCTYPE CHAPTER
.PRINTSTYLE TYPESET
\#
.FAM P
.PT_SIZE 10
.LS 12
\#
.START
</pre>
</p>
<a name="USING_INVOKING"><h2><u>Printing — invoking groff with mom</u></h2></a>
<p>
After you've finished your document, naturally you will want to
print it. This involves invoking groff from the command line. In
all likelihood, you already know how to do this, but in case you
don't, here are two common ways to do it.
<pre>
groff -mom -l <filename>
groff -mom <filename> | lpr
</pre>
</p>
<p>
In the first, the <kbd>-l</kbd> option to groff tells groff to
send the output to your printer. In the second, you're doing the
same thing, except you're telling groff to pipe the output to your
printer. Basically, they're the same thing. The only advantage to
the second is that your system may be set up to use something other
than <strong>lpr</strong> as your print command, in which case, you
can replace <kbd>lpr</kbd> with whatever is appropriate to your box.
</p>
<p>
Sadly, it is well beyond the scope of this manual to tell you
how to set up a printing system. See the README file for
minimum requirements to run groff with <strong>mom</strong>.
</p>
<p>
<strong>NOTE FOR ADVANCED USERS:</strong> I've sporadically
had groff choke on perfectly innocent sourced files within
<strong>mom</strong> documents. You'll know you have this problem
when groff complains that it can't find the sourced file even when
you can plainly see that the file exists, and that you've given
<kbd>.so</kbd> the right path and name. Should this happen, pass
groff the <kbd>-U</kbd> (unsafe mode) option along with the other
options you require. Theoretically, you only need <kbd>-U</kbd>
with <kbd>.open, .opena, .pso, .sy,</kbd> and <kbd>.pi</kbd>,
however reality seems, at times, to dictate otherwise.
</p>
<a name="USING_PREVIEWING"><h2><u>How to preview documents</u></h2></a>
<p>
Other than printing out hard copy, there are two well-established
methods for previewing your work. Both assume you have a working
X server.
</p>
<p>
Groff itself comes with a quick and dirty previewer called
gxditview. Invoke it with
<pre>
groff -X -mom filename
</pre>
It's not particularly pretty, doesn't have many navigation
options, requires a lot of work if you want to use other than
the "standard" groff PostScript fonts, and occasionally
has difficulty accurately reproducing some of
<strong>mom</strong>'s macro effects
(<a href="goodies.html#SMARTQUOTES">smartquotes</a>
and
<a href="goodies.html#LEADER">leaders</a>
come to mind). What it does have going for it is that it's fast and
doesn't gobble up system resources.
</p>
<p>
A surer way to preview documents is with <strong>gv</strong>
(ghostview). This involves processing documents with groff,
and directing the output to a PostScript file, like this,
<pre>
groff -mom filename > filename.ps
</pre>
then opening the .ps file in <strong>gv</strong>.
</p>
<p>
While that may sound like a lot of work, I've set up my editor
(elvis) to do it for me. Whenever I'm working on a document that
needs previewing/checking, I fire up <strong>gv</strong> with the
"Watch File" option turned on. To look at the file, I
tell elvis to process it (with groff) and send it to a temporary
file (<kbd>groff -mom filename > filename.ps</kbd>), then open
the file inside <strong>gv</strong>. Ever after, when I want to
look at any changes I make, I simply tell elvis to work his magic
again. The Watch File option in <strong>gv</strong> registers that
the file has changed, and automatically loads the new version.
Voilą! — instant previewing.
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
<a href="typesetting.html#TOP">Next</a>
<a href="definitions.html#TOP">Prev</a>
<a href="#TOP">Top</a>
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