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PROPOSED: drop devps "oldfonts" support


From: G. Branden Robinson
Subject: PROPOSED: drop devps "oldfonts" support
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2022 10:46:18 +1100
User-agent: NeoMutt/20180716

Hi folks,

I wanted to solicit opinions on a trim-down and simplification of the
groff build, source tree, and distribution archive.

I'd like to get rid of the "old fonts" directory that grops(1) can be
configured to find.

Here's what that is, according to its man page.

Old fonts
       groff versions 1.19.2 and earlier contained descriptions of a
       slightly different set of the 35 Adobe core fonts; the
       differences are mainly the lack of a Euro glyph and a reduced set
       of kerning pairs.  For backwards compatibility, these old font
       descriptions are also installed in the /usr/local/share/groff/
       1.23.0/oldfont/devps directory.

       To use them, make sure that grops finds the fonts before the
       default system fonts (with the same names): either give grops the
       -F command-line option,
              $ groff -Tps -P-F -P/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/oldfont ...
       or add the directory to groff’s font and device description
       search path environment variable,
              $ GROFF_FONT_PATH=/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/oldfont \
                     groff -Tps ...
       when the command runs.

groff 1.19.2 was released on or about 2005-09-04, per "Changelog.119".

If I look at, say, one thread[1] in an HP Forum, someone appears to
quote the "HP Customer Support - Retired Products" page as saying,
"Typically, HP stops supporting consumer products after ten years.  Read
the policy and find out if your HP device is on the list."

That text is no longer in evidence at that page[2], however the list of
retired products there is obviously incomplete, with many models of HP
LaserJet not even listed.

Given that the devices that shipped with internal copies of the
PostScript level 2 base 35 fonts were already "old" in 2005, and over 15
years have passed since then, it seems unlikely to me that such printers
are still in service.  And if they are, the "old" font metrics can be
obtained from a historical release of groff or from Git by simply
checking out the tree at a point before we delete them, if we do so.

Does anyone object to this and have a use case to offer?

Regards,
Branden

[1] 
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printing-Errors-or-Lights-Stuck-Print-Jobs/need-list-of-End-of-Life-End-of-Support-EOSL-of-ALL-HP/td-p/6997512
[2] https://support.hp.com/us-en/retired-products

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