[Groff] (no subject)

[mcclosk]

Dear experts:

Let me confess right away that I know next to nothing about troff and
groff. I live on the emacs/TeX side of the galaxy.

That said, I hope you won't mind if I ask a question here. I run a
small network of computers all running Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (the
current release). It has groff version 1.15.2-1. There is a user
migrating to this system from SunOS and Athena who does all of her
writing with troff (and vi). 

She is encountering some compatibility problems with groff (or at
least with the version available under Debian 2.2) which I have so far
been unable to help her with. The principal difficulty has to do with
the typesetting of certain accents (umlaut and macron
specifically). There seem to be other problems involving tbl but they
seem also to be less serious. I reproduce below a portion of a
dccument which illustrates these difficulties and the error messages
which are generated.

I've looked at the man pages, at the Debian docs, and at what I can
find of the groff manual, but I've not so far found anything that was
really enlightening.

If anyone could give me any pointers, I'd be very very grateful,

Jim McCloskey
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The warnings and error-messages:

% groff -C -t -e test -Tdvi > test.dvi

 tbl:test:18: column separation specified for last column
 tbl:test:28: column separation specified for last column
 /usr/share/groff/tmac/tmac.safer:3: error: end of file while defining macro 
`un'
 /usr/share/groff/tmac/tmac.safer:3: error: end of file while defining macro 
`un'
 tbl:test:47: column separation specified for last column
 tbl:test:57: column separation specified for last column
 test:10: warning: can't find special character `um'
 test:18: warning: can't find special character `ma'

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The troff source:

.po 1.25i
.ll 6i
.fo ''%''
.sz 12
.ls 2
.nh
.ti +.5i
Like many other Austronesian languages, Chamorro has a version of 
the construction known as object incorporation.  Consider
(2), in which the incorporating verb is \fIg\o'a\(um'i-\fR `have'
and the incorporated object is bracketed.
.nf
.ls 1
.ne 4
.TS
tab (@);
lw(.25i) l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 .
(2)a. @Mang-g\o'a\(um'i-[ga'] @h\o'a\(ma'm.
@agr-have-pet @we
.TE
.ti +1i
We have animals.

.ne 4
.TS
tab (@);
lw(.25i) l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 .
\ \ \ \ \ b. @Hayi @g\o'a\(um'i-[patgun]?
@who @WH[nom].agr.have-child
.TE
.ti +1i
Who has a child?

.fi
.ls 2
What is distinctive about Chamorro incorporation from an Austronesian
perspective is that the incorporated object can be doubled by an 
independent noun phrase, henceforth referred to as the \fIextra object\fR.  In 
other words, Chamorro has what Mithun (1981) called classificatory
noun incorporation.  Compare
.nf
.ls 1
.ne 4
.TS
tab (@);
lw(.25i) l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 .
(3)a. @G\o'a\(um'i-[ga'] @dos @na @ga'lagu @gui'.
@agr.have-pet @two @L @dog @he
.TE
.ti +1i
He has two dogs. 

.ne 4
.TS
tab (@);
lw(.25i) l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 l0 .
\ \ \ \ \ b. @Hayi @g\o'a\(um'i-[patgun] @hao?
@who? @WH[nom].agr.have-child @you
.TE
.ti +1i
Whose child are you (lit. Who has a child, namely, you)?

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