X-Debbugs-CC: Bjarni Ingi Gislason <bjarn...@simnet.is> In my opinion, this bug should be reassigned to the zip package.
Also, the correct term is "font translation", not "font transformation". https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Selecting-Fonts.html At 2023-08-07T22:11:43+0000, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote: > Package: man-db > Version: 2.11.2-3 > Severity: normal > > Dear Maintainer, > man zip > /dev/null > > * What was the outcome of this action? > > troff:<standard input>:175: warning: cannot select font 'C' > ... Can reproduce. This warning occurs many times, along with two others. troff:zip.1:1675: warning: cannot select font 'N' troff:zip.1:2636: warning: escape character ignored before 'i' These two appear to be due to typos. > * What outcome did you expect instead? > > No warnings. These messages arise due to errors in the page sources; the formatter is unable to do what is being asked of it. > File "/etc/groff/man.local" needs a font transformation > > .if n .ftr C R Colin Watson rejected this idea when Python docutils-generated man pages exhibited the same problem. This issue has now been fixed upstream in python-docutils--the right place, in my opinion--and uploaded to Debian. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1041809 zip(1) appears to have been composed directly by a human. The page is (strictly speaking) buggy, and use of the `\fC` escape sequence is not portable across *roff implementations. It is also ineffectual on terminal output devices regardless of implementation. There are a number of related problems here. * It's impossible to change font family or type size in an nroff document. Nevertheless, it is attempted commonly enough that GNU troff (and all other troffs I know of) silently ignore such attempts. * Not all troffs even support the _concept_ of "font families"; you will not find it in Ossanna troff or Kernighan troff. * Portable man pages must use only fonts named `R`, `I`, and `B`. It is consequently better to use man(7)'s facilities for switching fonts. * Even on typesetting devices, a font named `C` is not guaranteed to exist. As far as I can tell from my research over the years, this font name was never supported by the troff in BSD Unix until it replaced its AT&T troff with GNU troff. * AT&T device-independent troff, in lines of descent from Kernighan troff (ca. 1980), _sometimes_ supported a font named `C`. Sometimes it was called `CW` instead. Sometimes both were available. Sometimes it wasn't available at all. * There is no portable interface for testing the availability of a font in the output device. GNU troff supports `.if F` for this purpose; AT&T troff and at least some of its descendants do not. It appears to me that in most or all cases, zip(1) uses this 'C' font mark up literal input, like examples of command-line usage, on their own output lines. That's good, because it suggests that the page can easily migrate to the EX/EE man(7) extension, first developed in Research Ninth Edition Unix (1986) and adopted by groff in 2007-2009. To retain portability, since Info-ZIP likely wants to retain support for a huge variety of systems, the page could take the approach recently adopted by lexgrog(1) in the man-db project. It looks like the upstream package hasn't been updated in 15 years. I'm happy to prepare some patches to improve its man pages for the Debian package. It looks like most of the corrections relevant to this bug report can be straightforwardly automated with sed(1). I'm also happy to contribute some further correctness and portability issues to the page per groff_man_style(7). Let me know. Regards, Branden
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