[Groff] paper size of PS output

[Steve M. Robbins]

Hello,

A user on a system I administer is having trouble translating troff
files to a PS file formatted for letter size paper.  

Our groff build (from debian) has the following line in
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1/font/devps/DESC:

    papersize /etc/papersize a4

which I understand will take the paper size from the file
/etc/papersize, the contents of which are "letter".  

[I changed the "a4" to "letter" in the DESC file just to check
and found the same result.]

The problem as described to me is:

    For some time I have had the problem that groff thinks my printer
    is A4 rather than letter size.

    To see the problem, run
    % groff
    on a file containing

    .pp
    hello world

    You get ps output, and if you view in gv you will see "A4" is set.
    When you print on letter size paper, the "hello world" is
    truncated.

I have run groff on the simple 2-line file indicated, and verified that
the output in "gv" selects A4.  However, I can't see anything in the PS
file that looks like page size selection.

Can anyone straighten us out?  Is there a bug in groff, in our
configuration, or is it in our understanding of groff?

Many thanks,
-S