[TUHS] Proliferation of options is great simplification of pipes, really?

G. Branden Robinson g.branden.robinson at gmail.com
Mon Feb 22 15:45:01 AEST 2021


At 2021-02-21T22:34:10-0600, Will Senn wrote:
> On 2/21/21 9:32 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > What strikes _me_ about the above is the awful Denglish in it.  I
> > fixed this back in 2017 and the correction shipped as part of groff
> > 1.22.4 in December 2018.
> Mac Mojave: Groff Version 1.19.2              3 July
> 2005                         GROFF(1)

Yikes.  Yeah, every once in a while a macOS user reports a known defect
to the groff list, one we've fixed years ago.  Apple's insistence on
shipping a 15-year old version is pretty frustrating.

I'm given to understand that "brew" can be used straightforwardly to
obtain much more recent groff builds, and I know for sure that we have
macOS users contributing reports when something in the toolchain goes
wrong and we need to accommodate it.  Here's a recent example[1].

I've been soliciting help from Windows users to keep our build in good
shape over there, to no effect lately.  This may have something to do
with Microsoft's latest Unix compatibility effort being a bundled Ubuntu
distribution--I don't know the details.  It may be that going forward
there will simply be no audience for "native" Windows support in groff.

> Very informative post, Branden. I appreciate the details. I gotta read
> more code :).

Thank you!  TUHS has been a tremendously useful resource in helping me
to document where things came from, as well as to figure out when
some element of surprising behavior is just a bug versus a historical
compatibility feature.

V9 sources sure would be nice to have, as would DWB versions other than
3.3... <hopeful face>

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?60035
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