The overwhelming majority of preprints in the 1990–1992 sample surveyed were formatted with single columns of text per page (98 %) and one page of text per preprint page (96 %). Obviously the AAS/WGAS Latex macros should respect this strong preference.
Most preprints had the figures at the end (87 %) rather than interspersed in the text. This may be partly due to preference and partly due to the current difficulty of including the figures within the text.
Astronomers were divided on whether to single space (42 %) or double space (58 %) their text of their preprints. Since there was no clear preference for either style, the AAS/WGAS Latex macros should make it extremely simple to choose either single spaced or double spaced output.
There was a wide divergence of opinions on how to divide up the title, abstract, and main text beginning with the introduction into pages. Most preprints (62 %) put title, abstract, and introduction on three separate pages, but a significant subset (14 %) of preprints ran all three together with no page breaks. Most astronomers (81 %) preferred a separate title page whether or not they ran the abstract and introduction together. Many preprints had two title pages: one printed on the institutional preprint cover or designed so that the title and authors were visible through a hole in the institution's preprint cover, and a second title page following in a format more suited to the author's tastes or needs. A common feature of title pages was some indication of where the paper was to be published (title of the conference proceedings or name of the journal), its status (submitted, accepted, in press), and a date of some sort (date of the conference, date of submission to the journal, scheduled date for journal publication, or date of preprint mailing). Clearly there should be a lot of flexibility in how the AAS/WGAS Latex macros format the title page. Fortunately page breaks are simple to add or subtract in Latex.