Re: Do you use the test-groff script?

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Dave,

Dave Kemper wrote on Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 08:38:05PM -0600:

> If you use test-groff,

*Please don't!*

> would you find the script more useful, less useful, or unchanged
> in its usefulness if it were to honor your current environment's
> settings of GROFF_BIN_PATH, GROFF_FONT_PATH, and GROFF_TMAC_PATH?
> (Its current behavior is to ignore any values in these environment
> variables, in contrast to an installed groff, where these environment
> variables affect various search paths.)
> 
> This question came up in http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?57630, but
> few users of this script are likely aware of this bug report, so
> I'm soliciting input from a wider audience.

The intention of my comment in that ticket was quite te opposite
of what you are now asking for.

It is quite bad enough that we have to maintain troff(1), groff(1),
and nroff(1), each with similar but subtly different user interfaces.
Wrappers on top of wrappers do not help user experience.

My point is that test-groff should absolutely *not* be something
that users should even be aware of.  Let's not add yet more complexity
by trying to maintain yet another wrapper.

I don't even like the fact that the test suite currently requires
this script, but oh well, that's the current state of affairs,
deplorable as it may be.  I'd rather get rid of this hack (if we
can) than ask users' opinions about it.

Yours,
  Ingo