RE: [Groff] -pspic causes hang

[Ted Harding]

On 16-Sep-08 23:24:22, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> Under groff 1.18.1.1 on Cygwin or Linux Fedora, pspic causes groff
> to hang unless I take unusual measures.  A simple demo:
> 
>         groff -pspic /dev/null
> 
> Looking deeper, I am surprised to find pic running--I can't
> imagine why. Apparently some process is trying to read
> standard input.  It can be satisfied by giving it an eof:
> 
>       groff -pspic /dev/null </dev/null
> 
> Can anybody offer insight into what's happening, or whether
> the phenomenon is replicable?

Hi Doug,
[1]
I think the command line you're groping for is

  groff -mpspic ... [but see [3] below]

[2]
There's no option "-pspic" as such, EXCEPT that if you parse it
according to the groff options listed in 'man groff' you will find:

  -p     Preprocess with pic.
  -s     Preprocess with soelim.
 [-p     Redundant in view of initial "-p"]
  -i     process standard input after the specified input files.
  -c     disable color output.

... which, I think, explains the behaviour you observed!

[3]
However, you don't need to invoke "-mpspic" explicitly unless you
are using a postprocessor other than "ps" (e.g. if you use an option
like -Tascii), since "-Tps" is the default, and the macro package
ps.tmac invokes pspic.tmac automatically (unless you specify
"compatibility" mode which, since you didn't have an option "-C",
you didn't):

  .\" ps.tmac
  .\"
  [...]
  .if !\n(.C \
  .  mso pspic.tmac


Hoping this helps,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
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Date: 17-Sep-08                                       Time: 02:00:58
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