This surely is no big deal, but something which on occasion could present a
a user with a wily problem as it just did with me.

Currently, groff prefixes its search path for tmac files with the user's
home directory which means that any tmac files you might have lying around
in your home directory will be used by groff before any other tmac files,
such as the ones from the groff installation itself.

Your home directory is no natural location for tmac files, I hear you say,
but I don't think that I'm the only one who has a bad habit of not keeping
my home directory tidy - it has a tendency to get cluttered with a lot of
different files over time. In my case, an "s.tmac" file, that once upon a
time I had done something with, was hiding in there and it caused some
rendering problems of *.ms files which I falsely attributed to the groff
installed version as I didn't even suspect that groff would look in my home
directory before anything else. And as you know, one must have at least an
inkling of what a problem might be before being induced to search in
documentation.

But these were some specifics to explain how a problem might arise. On a
more principal level, I find it an oddity at best that groff _prefixes_ its
tmac search path with the user's home directory and therefore I hereby
suggest it either be removed - or if being kept in the search path, then be
moved to the end of it.

So, you're hereby invited to raise your thumbs or slam my suggestion down
the gutter. ;)

Regards,
Morten


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