[Groff] Re: Problem with grohtml on Win32

[Gaius Mulley]

Keith MARSHALL <address@hidden> writes:

Hi Keith,

well done with all your efforts.

Keith MARSHALL <address@hidden> write:

 [ .. loads of good information deleted .. ]

> This just leaves one problem -- when the build host and the ultimate
> runtime host disagree on the naming of the ghostscript executable, or if
> the runtime host doesn't have such an executable in the PATH, then image
> generation in pre-grohtml will fail.  I certainly agree that pre-grohtml
> *should* perform a PATH search for the ghostscript executable, during
> initialisation, and issue an explicit diagnostic message if it can't be
> found -- the default
> 
>     Calling 'echo showpage | gs ...' returned status 255
> 
> doesn't really convey much useful information to the end user :-(

sadly not :-)

> If we implement such a PATH search, then it shouldn't require too much
> additional effort to code a search for each of the well known executable
> names in turn, accepting the first successful match, or issuing the
> diagnostic if no suitable candidate is found.  If we adopt this policy,
> then IMHO, it becomes an entirely moot issue whether the image generator
> name is recorded in the DESC file or not -- I can see no real need for it.
> 
> What do you think?

my thoughts are that I think keeping the image generator in DESC is
valid given that there is a choice of image generator (or at least
choice of name). The other pnm utils seem to have no alternative. I
agree that the path checking should check all executables and then set
some boolean variable upon failure so we just get the one sensible
error message (and afterwards give up any attempt at image generation).

But this is just my opinion and there are probably other methods of
cracking the nut..

regards,
Gaius