Re: [groff] mom date string

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Kirill,

Kirill S Sapelkin wrote on Mon, Jul 08, 2019 at 07:19:17PM -0700:

> Just started using groff and mom (had been using LaTeX) for letters so far.
> So far it seems elegant.
> 
> Could not find a way to automaticaly insert the date at compile time
> other than:
> 
> .DATE
> .sy date '+%e %B %Y'  > dater
> .so dater
> .sy rm dater
> 
> This seems to require the -U (unsafe) option in compiling.  
> 
> mm has 
> 
> /* (DT)
> 
> Is there anything like this in mom?  

I don't know about mom, but consider whether you really want to do this.
I always found it extremely annoying when finding a directory of letters
somewhere and they all had dates automatically inserted at compile time,
so there was no way of finding the date that was in the letters when
they were actually sent.  You can't always rely on the "last changed"
date of the file itself: files often get copied around later.

Logically, inserting the date at compile time doesn't really make
sense.  You don't want the date of compiling there, you want the
date the letter was written and originally sent.  So there is really
value in having the author enter the date manually.

Yours,
  Ingo