[bug #59233] tbl: embeds deceptive diagnostic regarding text blocks

[G. Branden Robinson]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?59233>

                 Summary: tbl: embeds deceptive diagnostic regarding text
blocks
                 Project: GNU troff
            Submitted by: gbranden
            Submitted on: Thu 08 Oct 2020 12:46:02 PM UTC
                Category: Preprocessor tbl
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Incorrect behaviour
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

tbl tells contemptible lies.  It causes pages to grouse about "text blocks"
even when _no text blocks are present_.


$ ./build/test-groff -Tutf8 -z -t -man
./build/man/groff_char.7./build/man/groff_char.7: around line 536: warning:
table text block will not fit on page 3
./build/man/groff_char.7: around line 1361: warning: table text block will not
fit on page 10
$ grep 'T{' ./build/man/groff_char.7 || echo NOPE, NO TEXT BLOCKS
NOPE, NO TEXT BLOCKS


I suggest that this problem would have been recognized and fixed long ago, but
the roff markup that tbl produces is nigh inscrutable.  Much of this
difficulty arises from the obscurantist naming convention for the registers. 
They begin with the "3" used by AT&T troff, avail themselves of the additional
identifier length afforded by GNU troff, but then fail to exploit that length
for the creation of easily-intelligible register names.

Thompson's Curse lives on!

Also suggestive is the fact that this warning does not get emitted with PS
output.  I don't recall _ever_ seeing it, for _any_ table, on PS output, but I
don't have a big enough corpus of test documents to be completely certain of
that.  It doesn't turn up for any of the tables in groff's man pages, though.




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