RE: [Groff] DESC question

[Ted Harding]

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.


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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
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Date: 21-Feb-05                                       Time: 09:02:26
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