bugGNU roff - Bugs: bug #58894, remove nonfunctional lines from...

 
 

bug #58894: remove nonfunctional lines from groff font files

Submitter:  Dave <barx>
Submitted:  Tue 04 Aug 2020 06:11:19 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  Font devps Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  Warning/Suspicious behaviour Status:  Need Info
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  None
Open/Closed:  Open Planned Release:  None
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Sun 16 Aug 2020 02:13:36 PM UTC, comment #3: 

Shifting to "Need Info" because I'm blocked on this until I figure out the issue(s) raised in bug #57506.

A sort of hack could be done now, my moving existing files to .in and adding Makefile rules to drive sed scripts to change them, but that is a second-class solution.

If someone experiments a bit (it might end up being me), or if one of the steely-eyed old font experts can speak up to show us the way, the correct path should not prove too difficult.

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Tue 04 Aug 2020 01:31:58 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Makes sense to me.  Communicating via comments that groff ignores these lines is important to anyone looking at the files who might otherwise conclude this is a useful thing to do.  But the lines don't actually have any effect, so whether they're specifically commented out (as opposed to merely being commented upon) doesn't seem to matter much.

As bug #57506 notes, the font files in devps live in a gray area between original source files and generated files.  I don't know how much of their content comes from afmtodit and how much (if any) is manually edited after the fact.

Dave <barx>
Group Member
Tue 04 Aug 2020 08:58:44 AM UTC, comment #1: 

As far as I know, no one actually has any objection to the space-kerning feature.  How about we comment out these lines with a reference to the Savannah big?

I'm all for deleting dead code or incorrect comments but this would be neither.  Instead it would be a reminder to anyone who sees the comments that this is an area where they can contribute to groff.  :)

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Tue 04 Aug 2020 06:11:19 AM UTC, original submission:  

As bug #58718 observes, groff does not allow kernpairs in its font files with a space as the first element.

Despite this, several kernpair entries in a handful of font files (specifically font/devps/{[HN]*,PR}) have "u0020" as the first element.  True to Werner's assertion, these lines seem to have no effect.


$ cat kerntest
.de sample
A Very Yellow Tortoise Always Wins.
..
.ps 24
.vs 24
.nf
.sp
.fam N
.sample
.fam New
.sample
.fam Newest
.sample
$ mkdir /tmp/devps
$ grep -v ^u0020 /usr/share/groff/current/font/devps/NR > /tmp/devps/NewR
$ grep -v '^[VTY] ' /usr/share/groff/current/font/devps/NR > /tmp/devps/NewestR
$ groff -F/tmp kerntest > kerntest.ps


The first two lines of the resulting PostScript file look identical, despite the lines using font files that specify different kerning rules around spaces.  The third output line definitely shows by contrast the absence of kerning after some of the capital letters.

Groff shouldn't ship font files with lines that don't do the advertised job.  Ideally, bug #58718 would be fixed so that these lines do work.  But if a fix for that bug is not ready by the time of the next release, the nonfunctional lines in the font files should be removed.

Dave <barx>
Group Member

 

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    Follow 4 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2024-01-02 gbranden Dependencies- Depends on bugs #57506
    2020-08-16 gbranden StatusIn Progress Need Info
    2020-08-14 gbranden StatusNeed Info In Progress
    2020-08-04 gbranden StatusNone Need Info

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