Re: [groff] ms footnote weirdness

[Alejandro López-Valencia]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert D. Goulding" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>
Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 1:48 PM
Subject: [groff] ms footnote weirdness


> Just noted a couple of oddities after installing the latest devel
groff.
> I have the following lines in my ms customizations, to get footnotes
the
> way I like 'em:
>
> .nr FPD 0
> .nr FL \n(LL
> .nr FI 0
>
> But, since installing the latest version, the footnotes are vastly
spread
> out from each other.  I reinstalled the stable 1.18, and the problem
went
> away.
>
> Another piece of new behaviour in the last couple of days: there
always
> seems to be a blank page added on to the end of the ps output.
>
> These behaviours must be the result of very recent patches, since I
> noticed them for the first time in the last couple of days, and I
usually
> update groff twice a week (it's a nervous habit/work avoidance
strategy!)
>
> Robert.
>

I can confirm this. This wasn't happening until last weekend's snapshot
and it is related to the changes in troff.cc and/or node.cc. I'll use
this as an excuse to dispense some incense about tbl (see attached
example file).

Please notice that the last line in the example file contains the values
of the PS and VS registers. I haven't figured out how to fix the
evident: While the VS value is in device units, PS value is in points
and only accepts integer values (in points), trying to specify any unit
dimensions explicitly makes the macro package blow chunks. I know that
that is the expected behavior of ATT ms with (di)troff--furthermore it
would not accept a size different to 10, 11 or 12, but groff should
allow fractional point size values (converted internally to device
units); I for one like to set Verdana at 8.75/12.5 points for body text
:).

tbl_is_bug_ridden.ms
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