UNIX° TEXT PROCESSING

An Extended ms Macro Package

In the previous chapter, we’ve looked at some of the essential elements of a macro package-the innards that make it tick. However, few people will write a macro package just because they think they can do a better job at the basics than ms or mm. More often, users who need specific formatting effects will build a macro set to achieve those effects.

The macros used to produce this book are a good example of a custom macro package. They were developed to create a distinctive and consistent style for a series of books on UNIX by different authors. Although this macro package must of course do all of the basics we’ve talked about, many of its macros provide solutions to more specific problems. For example, there are macros for showing side-by-side before and after screens for vi and macros for inserting italicized commentary in examples.

To illustrate more concretely the issues that force you to create or significantly extend a macro package, this chapter will look at a set of extended ms macros for typesetting technical manuals. Extensions built into this package fall into two major categories:

   Extensions that make it easier to control the appearance of a document, particularly the page size (described in the last chapter) and the style of section headings, ...