vox clamantis in deserto
When I picked up a copy of 1.23.0 barely a week after its release, I found (and reported) that [groff -ms -p] had a fatal auto-immune disease, in which -ms diagnosed customary pic output as invalid. Nearly a year later, our departmental computer center just caught the disease from Ubuntu. If complaints of unusability have not been piling up in the interim, it seems that users like me, with gobs of -ms -p documents, are a relict endangerd species. Doug.
Re: vox clamantis in deserto
On Wed, Jul 03, 2024 at 02:25:05PM -0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote: > When I picked up a copy of 1.23.0 barely a week after its release, I found > (and reported) that [groff -ms -p] had a fatal auto-immune disease, in > which -ms diagnosed customary pic output as invalid. Nearly a year later, > our departmental computer center just caught the disease from Ubuntu. If > complaints of unusability have not been piling up in the interim, it seems > that users like me, with gobs of -ms -p documents, are a relict endangerd > species. I think this is https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64438, right? If experts advise that this patch is safe to cherry-pick in isolation (I know neither -ms nor pic well), then I'd be happy to upload it to Debian, and that would at least trickle into future Ubuntu releases even if there doesn't happen to be a proper groff release in the interim. -- Colin Watson (he/him) [cjwat...@debian.org]
Re: vox clamantis in deserto
Hi Doug, At 2024-07-03T14:25:05-0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote: > When I picked up a copy of 1.23.0 barely a week after its release, I > found (and reported) that [groff -ms -p] had a fatal auto-immune > disease, in which -ms diagnosed customary pic output as invalid. > Nearly a year later, our departmental computer center just caught the > disease from Ubuntu. I had forgotten about this problem. (Magus venit sed non erat locus ad praesepium?) On 17 July, I posted a workaround patch to the mailing list (a one-liner): https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2023-07/msg00117.html The next day I pushed a proper fix to the groff Git repository (another one-liner). https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff-commit/2023-07/msg00288.html I apologize for the regression. > If complaints of unusability have not been piling up in the interim, I would admit that they don't seem to have done so with this bug. > it seems that users like me, with gobs of -ms -p documents, are a > relict endangerd species. Possibly. :( I'll reply separately to this list about the most widespread complaints I've seen about groff 1.23.0. As often happens, I got discursive. Regards, Branden signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: vox clamantis in deserto
Hi Colin,
At 2024-07-03T22:32:06+0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> I think this is https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64438, right? If
> experts advise that this patch is safe to cherry-pick in isolation (I
> know neither -ms nor pic well),
While shy of the term "expert", I can affirm thus. The fix is not
dependent on post-1.23.0 groff development in any way.
-.ie !\\n[.$]=2 \{\
+.ie \\n[.$]<2 \{\
> then I'd be happy to upload it to Debian, and that would at least
> trickle into future Ubuntu releases even if there doesn't happen to be
> a proper groff release in the interim.
That would be SO fetch.
Yours in failed linguistic innovation,
Branden
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