Control: reassign -1 zip On Mon, Aug 07, 2023 at 08:02:11PM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > In my opinion, this bug should be reassigned to the zip package.
Agreed. Reassigning there. > 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. -- Colin Watson (he/him) [cjwat...@debian.org]
