On 21-Feb-05 Ersin Akinci wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I get the feeling this is going to be a RTFM question, but I haven't > been able to find a straight answer anywhere...What exactly is the > DESC file? When I type in "groff" on my Debian testing box all it > does is wait for input (it doesn't return any output).
That, of course, is normal behaviour (as I dare say you know). > But I recently > compiled groff from scratch in another directory with a seperate > native toolchain I've been building, and when I run groff with no > options, this is the result: > > thebeast:/usr/src/groff-1.19.1# groff > groff: can't find `DESC' file > groff:fatal error: invalid device `ps' > > The groff on my Debian system is 1.18.1 and the groff I compiled is > 1.19.1. I compiled the new groff statically, could that be a problem? > Is this a bug, or do I need to set up a DESC file? When you run groff, it needs to be able to *find* a DESC file. Normally, the path to this file should be compiled-in when groff is compiled. This may be a matter of running 'config' with correct options as the first stage of the compilation. The DESC file is in the subdirectory [...]/groff/[xxx]/font/[device] where [...] is the path from / to the groff tree -- often /usr/share and [xxx] (which may be absent) is perhaps a version-specific subdirectory of [...]/groff. [device] is the subdirectory of groff corresponding to the specific device for which output is formatted (by default "devps", the PostScript device). In a standard Red Hat 9 distribution of groff, for instance, I have /usr/share/groff/1.18.1/font/devps which contains AB BMI DESC HI M PBI symbolsl.pfa zapfdr.pfa ABI BMR download HNB NB PI TB ZCMI AI CB G HNBI NBI PR TBI ZD AR CBI generate HNI NI prologue text.enc ZDR BMB CI HB HNR NR S TI BMBI CR HBI HR PB SS TR and as you can see there is a "DESC" in there. There is also (or should be) a "DESC" for each other device under .../font. The DESC file is a "device description file" which provides groff with many kinds of information about the font characteristics available for the device in whose subdirectory it occurs. Details can be studied in the man page man groff_font Hoping this helps! Basically, the problem you need to sort out is how to make the path to .../font known to groff when you compile. If that wasn't done, you should still be able to set this information in the environment variable GROFF_FONT_PATH: for an explanation of this and similar things see "man groff". Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 21-Feb-05 Time: 09:02:26 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Groff mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff
