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groff_char(7) and "can't find special character" warnings (was: groff bu


From: G. Branden Robinson
Subject: groff_char(7) and "can't find special character" warnings (was: groff build improvements and 1.23.0.rc2)
Date: Sun, 8 May 2022 20:41:47 -0500

Hi Axel!

At 2022-05-08T21:23:44+0200, Axel Kielhorn wrote:
> I build groff on MacOS 11 (intel) and get the following message:
> 
> troff: backtrace: file 'man/groff_char.7':1000
> troff:man/groff_char.7:1000: warning: can't find special character '.j'
> troff: backtrace: file 'man/groff_char.7':1407
> troff:man/groff_char.7:1407: warning: can't find special character 'vA'
> troff: backtrace: file 'man/groff_char.7':1531
> troff:man/groff_char.7:1531: warning: can't find special character 'bs'
> troff: backtrace: file 'man/groff_char.7':1697
> troff:man/groff_char.7:1697: warning: can't find special character '-+'
> troff: backtrace: file 'man/groff_char.7':1746
> troff:man/groff_char.7:1746: warning: can't find special character 'coproduct'
> troff: backtrace: file 'man/groff_char.7':1839
> troff:man/groff_char.7:1839: warning: can't find special character '+e‘
> 
> This is with bootstrap, configure, make.
> 
> I have Ghostscript 9.55.0 installed.
> Do I need a more recent version for these characters?

No.  These diagnostics are typical.  They arise from the fact that these
glyphs are historically not available in the Adobe Type 1 PostScript
fonts that came/come pre-installed on hardware devices that interpret
PostScript.  This is similar to the problem that PostScript laser
printers antedating the creation of the Euro currency symbol had when
encountering documents that required that sign.

We don't get a warning for that case because a Type 1 PostScript font,
"freeeuro.pfa", containing it was developed and contributed to groff (by
Werner Lemberg).  In March I raised the possibility of synthesizing
glyphs for all of the missing ones listed above (except the Bell System
logo)[1].  But that work has not yet reached fruition.

As far as I know, these warnings have always been issued for the
groff_char(7) man page if the appropriate GNU troff warning category is
enabled.

I note that it might be worth documenting these messages as ignorable,
maybe in the "PROBLEMS" file (cross-referencing it from "INSTALL.REPO"
and "INSTALL.extra") like the one from afmtodit(1) about the upsilon
sign and the ones about gnulib's vasprintf() implementation, which we
don't control.  groff's build is otherwise pretty quiet these days,
unless one enables ASAN.

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2022-03/msg00016.html

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