[bug #44714] compatibility mode: .do request and macro expansion via \* collide

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #3, bug #44714 (group groff):

[comment #1 comment #1:]
> I don't understand why '.do tm' is going to the next input line
> to collect arguments.  'tm' is not documented in CSTR #54 as
> behaving this way.

It's not the behavior of .tm that's at issue, but of .do.

This is the bug that's referred to in this comment in
[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/tmac/andoc.tmac
tmac/andoc.tmac]: "Due to a bug in GNU troff it necessary to have a no-op line
between `.do' and `\*'."

This comment was added in
[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/commit/?id=42c866a3f commit
42c866a3f] (which was part of the fix for bug #44708) and refers to these
changes in the commit:

-.  als TH reload-man
-\\*[Dd]\\
+.  do als TH reload-man
+.
+\\*(Dd\\


-.  als Dd reload-doc
-\\*[TH]\\
+.  do als Dd reload-doc
+.
+\\*(TH\\

Indeed, removing these two empty control lines wreaks havoc, showing that a
.tm isn't necessary to trigger the bug.

Probably until this is fixed (which may be a while if it proves as intractable
as Werner predicts), the andoc.tmac comment should cite this ticket rather
than vaguely referring to "a bug in GNU troff."

[comment #2 comment #2:]
>   Why does '.tm' need a '.do'?

It doesn't; that's just a minimal test case to illustrate the bug.  The
situation in andoc.tmac is a real-world case but not a minimal one.


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