Re: [Groff] Problems with arcs and angles

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi John,

> Looks like there's a mistake in groff_out(5). It describes its
> arc-drawing command as:

    Da h1 v1 h2 v2⟨line-break⟩
        Draw arc from current position to (h1, v1)+(h2, v2) with center
        at (h1, v1); then move the current position to the final point
        of the arc.

CSTR 54 says

    Da dh1 dv1 dh2 dv2
        draw arc from current position to dh1 + dh2, dv1 + dv2, center
        at dh1, dv1 from current position

I think they're equivalent.

> However, gropdf.pl tells a different story. To quote line #2791:
> <http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/src/devices/gropdf/gropdf.pl?id=453a8aa7c8f8dd0c78160466301f81be8c40df2e#n2791>
>
>     Documentation is wrong. Groff does not use Dh1,Dv1 as centre of the
>     circle!

The documentation is correct.  The code is wrong.  Later code copied
earlier code.

> I noticed something odd when drawing an arc which wasn't an
> evenly-sized quarter-circle. For instance, the following Pic code:
>
>     .PS
>     move down
>     A: box
>     arc at A.n
>     line right
>     .PE

I think pic produces correct troff for this, but then grops and many
others interpret it wrongly.  You initial attempt is correct, even
though it produces the "wrong" diagram.  "at" for an arc sets the centre
point;  that's A.n.  It will be anti-clockwise.  We finish the box at
A.s.  The start of the arc is after the implicit move downwards at that
start.

Here's some additions to your test.

    .PS
    move down
    A: box
    arc at A.n
    arc; arc; arc; arc
    line right
    line from A.n to A.n - 0, A.ht * 2
    line from A.n to A.n + arcrad * 2, (-A.ht - arcrad) * 2
    .PE

The four arcs are to draw a circle, returning to the start point, so you
can see grops's arc's radius isn't the default.  The two extra lines
show the correct CSTR 54 interpretation of where the arc should start
and end, as indeed it does when viewed with `groff -pX foo.pic'.

To see groff's interpretation,

    pic foo.pic | perl -pe 's/\\D/$n++; "\\Z%$n%$&"/ge' |
    groff | ps2pdf - foo.pdf

I'd guess gxditview gets it right because it has a pre-groff heritage
and so coded to Kernighan's DIT output, as you originally did.

In the groff source, adjust_arc_center() seems the culprit that many of
the output devices call to mess with arc's calculations.

--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy