[bug #64469] -o with out-of-range number produces incomprehensible error

[Dave]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64469>

                 Summary: -o with out-of-range number produces
incomprehensible error
                   Group: GNU roff
               Submitter: barx
               Submitted: Mon 24 Jul 2023 05:39:19 PM CDT
                Category: Driver grops
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Warning/Suspicious behaviour
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None


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Follow-up Comments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 24 Jul 2023 05:39:19 PM CDT By: Dave <barx>

$ groff --version | head -1
GNU groff version 1.22.4
$ echo Hello. | groff -o2 | wc
    202     577    3664
$ groff-latest --version | head -1
GNU groff version 1.23.0.rc4.19-96b92-dirty
$ echo Hello. | groff-latest -o2 | wc
grops:<standard input>:5: fatal error: 'V' command invalid before first 'p'
command
      0       0       0
$ echo Hello. | groff-latest -o1 | wc
    267     820    6662

This post-rc4 build is not _quite_ the same as the released groff 1.23, but by
this point I believe there were no further code changes before the release, so
I suspect (but have not built 1.23 to confirm) that this bug is in the
release.

In the -o2 case, the user is asking for a page that doesn't exist, so an error
is not unwarranted.  But the error generated gives little clue what the
problem is.  Groff 1.22.4 produced no error here, emitting a PostScript
document with no pages--which may not be the ideal outcome either but I think
is slightly better than the incomprehensible diagnostic, and is arguably
giving the user precisely what they asked for.

Someone testing rc3 came across similar error message
(http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2023-02/msg00133.html).  This turned out to be
contingent on a specific setting of the $GROFF_ENCODING environment variable. 
My environment does not have this variable (nor any other GROFF environment
variable) set.

(Found this issue while poking into
http://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-groff/2023-07/msg00144.html)







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