[Groff] summary of poll: which macro packages are in common use / and why.

[Klaus Robert Suetterlin]

Thanks to all who found the time to participate in the poll.

I'd like to sum up my impressions so far, and call the poll closed:

Everyone seems to stick with two macro packages.

Everyone states that macro packages neither protect from nor prevent
direct groff use.

The package to use is basically a question of familiarity only.

Packages fall (IMHO) in three categories: groff wrapper (me),
structured document (mm) and typesetter (mom, ms + modifications,
selfmade).

Most of the replies I recieved (privately and through the list)
named ms as the package of choice.  Three reasons were given: ms
is simple and easily extendable, it works with www, the user would
write custom macros to fulfill her typesetting needs.

Next was mm.  Mainly by people using it for 20+ years, just because
that was sold with AT&T UNIX.  One mentioned the use of gpresent.
One mentioned transition to Lyx(Latex) in progress.

Finally mom and the one-of-a-kind tmac.diss were proposed by their
authors.  And me was mentioned once by a user who especially liked
handling of section headings in page titles.


All macro packages, as well as fully roll your own seem sufficient
to solve the task I specified (format report, article, book style
material) and (unlike with TeX) all of the different aproaches seem
to work out in the end.

For the work that I can move away from (La)TeX --- as Tadziu Hoffmann
mentioned, some (a lot of) journals want LaTeX source, which is ok
with me;  unlike Word.doc --- mm seems the most promising to me.
Unlike the other packages it has a well formalised way to produce
an extendable set of standard documents.  And I like extending upon
a framework much better than modifying / reshaping / editing a
custom fitted solution.  I'd like www support with mm (or the other
way round :).


-- Robert S.