2 axis machining

I just spent some time building two adapters for my manual mill to fit servos on the X and Y axes. The adapters were made on the manual mill itself, but it's a laborious process as it requires several large pockets to be made. Add to that that I'm not a great machinist and you end up with some rough pockets that take about an hour of work each while bent over (the mill's not in the greatest of places). I still have the Z axis to go, but I'd like to see if I can use the work I've put in so far and run the mill with servos on the X and Y, and a manually operated Z axis. I'd only use this for the Z axis, which means three large pocketing operations, one small pocketing operations and some positioning for drilling. Can I operate LinuxCNC in a mode where it will pause on a Z axis G-Code operation and display how much Z I have to change, or would I have to replace the relevant G-Code with something like an M00?

You could use an M00 with a comment of the z axis move like this :

N122 X2.00 Y2.00 F5.0
N123 M00 ( Z-.150 )
N124 X-2.00 Y2.00

This would work for a slot. I used to run a lot of old 2 axis NC and CNC machines for drilling and light milling. This would work for that, and you could make ramping cuts by hand cranking the knee up as you made your moves for making pockets.

linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gcode/m-code.html#_m0_m1_program_pause
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gcode/overview.html#_comment_parameters
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gcode/overview.html#_debug_messages

Rick G