ended up making this a lot more complex:
- moved the document itself to `src/guide.xml`
- added dependency: `xq` converts xml to json
- added dependency: mustache converts json to groff
- moved helper groff macros to `src/guide.tmac`
learned some groff after reading *Unix Text Processing*
https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/utp/
- made the `ul` macro a conditional toggle
- fixed the formatting issues i had with the section headers and also
moved the section numbering to a global number register, and just
formatted it as an Alpha character
- the numbering issue with the item list was simply that i wasn't
escaping the register name enough times