Re: [Groff] Need some troubleshooting help

[Jon Snader]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 09:16:44PM -0400, Larry Kollar wrote:
> Good to see you again, Michael!
> 
> > I've a wierd problem I'm trying to track down.  Hopefully my  
> > explanation will make sense.  First, some software versions:
> > MacIntosh OS X version 10.4.5 running groff 1.19.1 and gv 3.6.1
> 
> Is that the version of groff that ships with OSX? Things *should* have 
> changed for the better, but it used to be that recompiling groff was 
> necessary to do anything besides format manpages.
> 
> > Linux Slackware version 10.2 with a 2.4.29 kernel, groff 1.17.2 and  
> > gv 3.5.8
> > The printing mechanism on the Linux box is LPRng version 3.9.0
> > with ifhp-3.5.11
> 
> I don't think it matters, but what version(s) of Ghostscript are you using?
> 
> One of the most outstanding things I see in the diff file is that the 1.19.1 
> version is specifying a default page size while the 1.17.2 version isn't. I 
> wonder if the printer or the print daemon is getting confused by that.
> 

I've seen something like this recently on Linux.  I'm running
groff 1.19.1 and have been for some time.  Recently my
distribution upgraded gv to 3.6.1 and things stopped working.
Specifically, gv wouldn't display groff postscript output at all.
If I convert to PDF with gs2pdf, gv displays the document fine.
If I use groff 1.19.2, then things start working again.

One more datum: I don't think this is a ghostscript problem
because displaying the document with gs works fine.  I believe
that the new gv introduced some sort of incompatibility (probably
in the prologue).  I haven't done any more analysis because my
distribution will soon "release" 1.19.2 and in the meantime the
ps->pdf conversion is allowing me to get work done.

jcs