Re: [Groff] Announcing 1.18

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2002 at 11:54:20AM +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> Finally, finally!  Here is groff version 1.18, currently only
> available as
> 
>   ftp://ftp.ffii.org/pub/groff/groff-1.18.tar.gz
> 
> but soon from all GNU hosts.

Looks pretty good so far! I'm really glad to see this.

> o A new keyword `papersize' has been added to the DESC file format.  Its
>   argument is either
> 
>   . a predefined paper format (e.g. `A4' or `letter')
> 
>   . a file name pointing to a file which must contain a paper size
>     specification in its first line (e.g. `/etc/papersize')
> 
>   . a custom paper size definition like `35c,4i'
> 
>   See groff_font(5) for more details.  This keyword only affects the
>   physical dimensions of the output medium; grops, grolj4, and grolbp use it
>   currently.  troff completely ignores it.

I've run into one snag which I didn't expect. I'd like to say "use
/etc/papersize if it's present, otherwise default to a4 or letter or
whatever configure picked". In order to use /etc/papersize
unconditionally I'd have to pull another package into the base system,
which people are a bit conservative about (not your problem, but
explains why I'm asking).

What do you think about extending the papersize DESC keyword to accept
"papersize /etc/papersize a4" for this kind of thing? Sorry I didn't
think about this earlier.

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  address@hidden