From: Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2018 16:29:10 -0400
To: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] [groff] Creating a numbered list without macros
Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org
Sender: "TUHS" <tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org>

An arguable distinction:

I thought hard about claiming priority for -ms. Joe Ossanna intended
option -m to foster macro packages from the outset. -man was an early use,
hidden in the man command.  But -man was not packaged (in the sense of
being an announced feature that can be used from its external description)
until v7. -ms appeared in v6.

Doug

Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

> Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
>>> Why create ms when you have mm?
>>
>> Well, the real reason is that ms was the very first macro package.
>> It has held up spectactularly well, evolving much less than the
>> underlying [ntg]roff.
>>
>> Doug
> 
> Or say, rather, the first *general purpose* macro package. The man
> macros predate it. :-)