[Groff] installation of ms macros

[Stewart C. Russell]

When Ted was up here yesterday (more on this later) we discovered an
interesting installation problem. All of Ted's scripts are based on the
ms macros, but we found that every time we tried something with a .char
definition in it, it failed.

It seems that on installation, if groff (1.16.1) find an existing troff
installation, it points its tmac.s back to the existing vendor's tmac.s.
Sun's ms macros do not support .char either the same way as groff, or
indeed may not support it at all.

While I understand that the rationale of having groff trying to work
with existing macros (after all, they could be heavily customised), it
does mean that the default groff installation is effectively broken on
many systems.

 Stewart

-- 
Stewart C. Russell              Senior Analyst, Dictionary Division
address@hidden  HarperCollins Publishers
use Disclaimer; my $opinion;    Glasgow, Scotland