[TUHS] M<some number> macros, wasRe: SCCS

[Marc Rochkind]

I found this TUHS thread from 2019:

https://tuhs.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tuhs@tuhs.org/thread/GPFOZNHNX2JOPPTPJEPRILDIT5O7N6QS/

in which Andy Hall's 1972 memo on M6 is referenced:

https://plan9.io/cm/cs/cstr/2.pdf

Marc

On Sun, Dec 15, 2024 at 2:53 PM Charles H Sauer (he/him) <
sauer at technologists.com> wrote:

> On 12/15/2024 2:17 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > At 2024-12-15T15:09:20-0500, John Levine wrote:
> >>> On Sun, Dec 15, 2024 at 10:49 AM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>> Incidentally, UNIX had a different language-independent macro
> processor
> >>>> called m6. ...
> >>
> >>> Correction: The version of M6 for UNIX was called M4. Maybe because it
> was
> >>> only 2/3 as complete?
> >>
> >> The Wikipedia article on macroprocessors says that M6 was written in
> >> the 1960s by McIlroy, Morris, and Hall, based on GPM and Trac, written
> >> in Fortran and ported to v2 Unix.
> >>
> >> M4 was written in the 1970s by Kernighan and Ritchie in C and is still
> >> around, notably as impenetrable magic in GNU autoconfig and sendmail
> >> config files. It looks a lot like GPM.
> >
> > Being aware of its reputation, I had some trepidation about using it,
> > and found its impenetrability to be overstated.
> >
> > For a few years now I've used it to generate two man pages from a single
> > source: groff_man(7) and groff_man_style(7).
> >
> >
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/tmac/groff_man.7.man.in?h=1.23.0
> >
> > The only thing I stubbed my toe on is m4's appropriation of common
> > English words for its command language.  A prefix sigil before such
> > words would have been a better choice.  But I got around that, too.
> >
> >
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/tmac/tmac.am?h=1.23.0#n252
> >
> > Regards,
> > Branden
>
> In 1997, when CSS was just beginning, long before
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_%28computer_language%29 was started in
> 2004, and subsequently illustrated m4 macros for creating HTML, I
> started using m4 macros extensively to define Web pages in such a matter
> that they could mimic appearance of other pages, and taught others at
> our startup to use those macros, so that our customers could use our
> software while retaining appearance consistent with the rest of their
> pages. Another way to think of the macros is that they comprise a static
> content management system – the content is stored in m4 files, which are
> transformed into HTML in advance, vs. more dynamic page generation in a
> typical content management system.
> https://web.archive.org/web/19990125090055/http://hire.com/ describes
> the software.
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/19980209192647/http://www.eds.com/careers/overview/cr_overview.shtml,
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/19990224005553/http://world4.hire.com/SVB/,
> and
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/19990422144616/http://www.careerstop.org/job.htm
> show remnants of customer pages created with those m4 macros.
>
> More at
>
> https://technologists.com/notes/2007/11/02/css-a-mans-got-to-know-his-limitations-2/
>
>
> Charlie
>
>
> --
> voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer at technologists.com
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> CharlesHSauer
>
>

-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com <mrochkind at gmail.com>*
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