Re: groff injects blank page; and program 'pnmtops' can't handle -nosetpage option; can't generate doc/gnu.eps

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Carlos,

At 2023-04-22T10:22:35-0400, Carlos wrote:
> > You are not obliged to try out this release candidate in any way,
> > but I thought I'd mention it.
> 
> I woudn't mind. As a matter of fact I tried it out, save the program
> 'pnmtops' can't handle
>  -nosetpage option; can't generate doc/gnu.eps sentence from the
>  subject line above which prevented the whole thing
> from compiling

Prevented the whole thing from compiling?  I can't reproduce this, even
after removing the 'netpbm' package from a Debian bullseye chroot build
environment.  I'm attaching a build log.

In it, I see the following:

...
checking for pnmtops... missing
checking for psselect... missing
checking for URW fonts in Type 1/PFB format... found in 
/usr/share/fonts/type1/urw-base35/
checking whether pnmtops accepts the '-nosetpage' option... no
...
configure: The programs 'pnmcrop', 'pnmcut', 'pnmtopng', 'pnmtops', and 
'psselect' were not found in $PATH.

  Consequently, groff's HTML output driver, 'grohtml', will not work
  properly.  It will not be possible to prepare or install
  groff-generated documentation in HTML format.
...
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/branden/BUILD/groff-1.23.0.rc4'

...and a successful exit.

> > Here is a simple experiment you can try, and my results with it.
> > 
> > $ echo '.TH foobar 1 baz qux' | nroff -man | cat -n
> >      1  foobar(1)                   General Commands Manual                 
> >  foobar(1)
> >      2
> >      3
> >      4
> >      5  qux                                   baz                           
> >  foobar(1)
> > 
> > If your output differs, we'll want to know.
> > 
> 
>      1        
>      2        foobar(|)                                                       
>      foobar(|)
>      3        
>      4        
>      5        
>      6        qux                                   baz                       
>      foobar(|)
> 
> That's my result from the teletype. And xterm confirms the same pretty
> much

Yes.  Notice that you have 6 lines of output where I have 5.  The
additional line is a blank one at the very top.  (I assume you mistyped
"1" as "|", as well.)

That is consistent with a stray blank line in a macro file, prior to the
input being read.

I did forget to have you check one of the more likely places for such an
error: the man.local file.

On my system, this file is in /etc/groff.

Please show us the output of "cat -n", run on the man.local file
(wherever it is located on your system).

We'll be looking for any lines that don't start with a dot.

> > Let us know what you find.
[...]
> but makes no difference on stdout unfortunately

Yes--I think man.local is the more likely culprit now that it's daylight
outside and I have a fresh supply of caffeine.

Regards,
Branden

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