There are several ways to use a macro package in a document. The
classical way is to specify the troff/groff option -m name at run
time; this makes the contents of the macro package name
available. In groff, the file name.tmac is searched within the
tmac path; if not found, tmac.name is searched for instead.
Alternatively, it is also possible to include a macro file by
adding the request .so filename to the document; the argument
must be the full file name of an existing file, possibly with the
directory where it is kept. In groff, this was improved by the
similar request .mso package, which added searching in the tmac
path, just like option -m does.
In order to resolve the .so and .mso requests, the roff
preprocessor soelim(1) must be called if the files to be included
need preprocessing. This can be done either directly by a
pipeline on the command line or by using the troff/groff option
-s. man calls soelim automatically.
For example, suppose a macro file is stored as
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/macros.tmac
and is used in some document called docu.roff.
At run time, the formatter call for this is
sh# groff -m macros docu.roff
To include the macro file directly in the document, use either
.mso macros.tmac
or
.so /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/macros.tmac
In both cases, the formatter should be called with option -s to
invoke soelim.
sh# groff -s docu.roff
