Re: DESC 'paperfile' keyword is not documented

[Mike Fabian]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> writes:

> From: Jim Avera <address@hidden>
> Subject: DESC 'paperfile' keyword is not documented
> Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 21:03:38 -0800
>
>> GROFF VERSION: 1.17.2
>> MACHINE: x86
>> OS: SuSE Linux 7.3
>> 
>> COMMAND LINE:
>>    echo "foo" | troff -Tps > /tmp/xx
>>    grops /tmp/xx >/dev/null
>> 
>> DESCRIPTION OF INCORRECT BEHAVIOUR:
>>     DESC 'paperfile' keyword is undocumented.
>> 
>> On my system, the following error occurs:
>>       grops:/tmp/xx:1: can't open `/etc/papersize'
>> 
>> The file /etc/papersize indeed does not exist (in SuSE 7.3),
>> but this file is not documented anywhere I can find.
>> I searched all the g* man pages and the groff info files.
>> 
>> SUGGESTED FIX:
>> 
>> Document the 'paperfile' DESC feature in the info files.
>> 
>> (SuSE also needs to fix their distribution to set up /etc/papersize, but
>> the lack of documentation in groff makes it hard for a normal user to
>> recover from this packaging bug).
>
> SuSE isn't using the plain version of groff, which doesn't have
> support for /etc/paperfile.  So it is up to SuSE to document that
> extension.
>
> Mike, please forward this bug report to the right person.

Unfortunately I am afraid the person to forward this to is myself.  I
recently inherited the maintainance of the SuSE groff package, i.e. I
am currently the default culprit.

The /etc/papersize stuff is a Debian extension. On SuSE we use almost
the same patches to groff which Debian uses, including the
/etc/papersize extension.

I already corrected the packaging bug with the missing /etc/papersixe
file shortly after the release of SuSE Linux 7.3. It now contains

address@hidden:/tmp$ cat /etc/papersize 
papersize a4
address@hidden:/tmp$ 

If this file is missing, 'A4' si the default, the above message
isn't really an error, it's just a warning.

You can use 'letter' instead if you replace 'a4' into /etc/papersize
with 'letter'.

I'll try to rewrite /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.groff soon, it seems to
tro to set a papersize, but doesn't write anything do /etc/papersize,
i.e. it looks obsolete. Probably /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.groff should
be changed to look at LC_PAPER and use this to write an appropriate
value to /etc/papersize.

Sorry for causing problems, I hope I can improve that soon.

-- 
Mike Fabian   <address@hidden>   http://www.suse.de/~mfabian
睡眠不足はいい仕事の敵だ。