[bug #64772] [hdtbl] consider deprecating

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #64772 (project groff):

[comment #1 comment #1:]
>   I see no need to abandon "hdtbl".

The proposal to deprecate it means it should exist in the next n releases of
groff with notice that it's deprecated.

It's unclear how much use it gets, as every reported bug against it seems to
have arisen from code inspection or build warnings, rather than from actual
use of the macros, despite the fact that they're "buggy as hell" (per Ingo). 
But announcing its deprecation is more likely to smoke out any actual users.

Are you generating Heidelberger tables for your own work, or merely running
basic tests against the package because it's part of groff?

> This software is in the "contrib" category, those who want to use it
> are more or less on their own.

That's not the purpose of "contrib".  Per the file
[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/LICENSES LICENSES]: "Files in
the contrib/ subdirectory of the source distribution are not strictly part of
groff.  That is, they are distributed with it and are Free Software
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html>, but they are not considered
essential parts of the distribution.  Further, they may bear licenses other
than the GPL or the FSF does not administer their copyrights."  There's more
discussion of this in bug #59545.  (Granted, LICENSES is not an intuitive
place to look for this info.  A README or similar in "contrib" itself might be
useful.)

If users are "more or less on their own," probably the appropriate place for
that code is in a source repository separate from groff's.  Groff declining to
distribute it doesn't mean no one else can.


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