Re: groff-1.19: setpagedevice prevents printing

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

As a followup to my report earlier today about the fact that the new
setpagedevice command produced by groff-1.19 prevents printing on
printers expecting US A-format paper, I made some further experiments.

I created new site files

        /usr/local/share/groff/site-font/devps/DESC
        /usr/local/share/groff/site-font/devdvi/DESC
        /usr/local/share/groff/site-font/devlbp/DESC
        /usr/local/share/groff/site-font/devlj4/DESC

from corresponding files in 

        /usr/local/share/groff/1.19/font/dev*/DESC

which have

        papersize letter

instead of

        papersize a4

While this provides a temporary solution to printing groff output at
our site, it means that any PostScript files produced here from groff
will not be printable on printers elsewhere in the world that are
expecting ISO A4 format paper, and that is very bad.  groff's output
should be printable anywhere.

Thus, my recommendation stands that groff should not issue a
setpagedevice command, and should produce a valid %%BoundingBox
comment in the output PostScript preamble.


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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- Center for Scientific Computing       FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
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