On Mon, 15 Jun 2015 10:20:16 -0500, in message CABrM6wk=CwdfeHVE0YfvdEUSrJ5tA67Y4iUWQ=lcbvfsm_3...@mail.gmail.com, Peng Yu wrote:
> > pdfman < $(man -w ls) | groff -Tpdf -mandoc -c > /tmp/ls.pdf
>
> I got this error. Do you know what is wrong?
>
> groff: can't find `DESC' file
> groff:fatal error: invalid device `pdf'
It looks to me like the directory
/usr/{share,local/share}/groff/current/font/devpdf
couldn't be found. Some Linux distributions by default include
only a very cut-down groff installation, useful only for
generating man pages for terminal use. For general-purpose use,
the entire set of groff packages has to be installed manually.
If you're using a Red Hat system of some sort, it's fairly easy to
determine how much of groff you've got:
$ yum list installed groff\*
If that command returns only something like:
groff-base.x86_64 1.22.2-11.fc21
then all you've got is the minimal, man-page-only installation.
If you've got the entire thing, you should see:
groff.x86_64 1.22.2-11.fc21
groff-base.x86_64 1.22.2-11.fc21
groff-doc.noarch 1.22.2-11.fc21
groff-perl.x86_64 1.22.2-11.fc21
groff-x11.x86_64 1.22.2-11.fc21
(Note that these packages are from my 64-bit Fedora 21 system.
Hence the ".x86_64" and ".fc21" fields.)
If you're running a Debian-based system, synaptic or apt can give
you the same information. I don't know how to use them, though,
so I can't provide any examples.
Of course, if you've built your groff directly from sources, you
can ignore most of what I wrote above. Except for the part about
the devpdf directory being missing. That looks to be your
immediate problem.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
--Dale
--
The question of whether computers can think is just like the
question of whether submarines can swim.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
pgpmN2cDI_Yhu.pgp
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