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. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 17-Sep-08 Time: 02:00:58 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
