building without tex (was: zero-width space)

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Branden,

G. Branden Robinson wrote on Sat, Jun 04, 2022 at 08:58:14PM -0500:

> While I have you, Deri raised a point in Savannah #62251 that I'd like

As you correctly say below, #62551.

> your feedback on.  He feels the weight of a TeX installation; other
> people probably will too.  It involved re-complexifying doc/doc.am a
> little bit, but I assuredly don't want to resurrect '--with-doc'.
> 
> https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?62551

FWIW, i don't object to making "make all" and "make install" work from
a git checkout if the tools for building groff.pdf are unavailable, and
simply skip building and installing groff.pdf in that case.  I expect
that will cause very little complexity, not at all comparable to
the bygone --with-doc horror show.

Of course, that implies that subsequently, "make dist" will inevitably
fail, so it won't help much for a serious developer who wants to do
complete testing of whatever changes they are considering.
Then again, maybe it helps some end-users who want to run groff-current
without having to bother with TeX, and who are content with "info groff"
and feel comfortable without groff.pdf.

Yours,
  Ingo

P.S.
I'm posting this here rather than in #62551 because it would really
be badly misplaced there.