Re: -s flag (soelim) not working?

[Peter Schaffter]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2022, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > Now, the '-s' flag issue...  Unless I am misunderstanding or
> > misreading something,
> >   soelim main | groff -Tutf8 -k
> > and
> >   groff -Tutf8 -ks main
> > should produce identical output, however the -s flag is ignored and
> > groff spits out garbage.  What's up?
> 
> I believe this issue came up last month as well.

I missed it.  There've been an awful lot of groff posts in my inbox
this past year. :)

> Apparently groff has "always" been this way, since preconv was written.
> 
> Bjarni noted this and complained about it in Savannah #59442, back in
> November 2020.
> 
> https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?59442
> 
> I raised some concerns about changing the preprocessing order

Is that all it is, then? 'groff -ks' is invoking preconv before
soelim?  My confusion grows.  If soelim, invoked at the start of the
chain, renders the sourced file correctly, it suggests that soelim
is performing preconv magic on it.  Why, then, doesn't '-s' do the
same, regardless of preprocessing order?

> Ingo suggested deferring consideration of the issue, since we
> were, ehrm, "close to a release".

Agreed.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca