bugGNU roff - Bugs: bug #64469, [grops] -o with out-of-range...

 
 

bug #64469: [grops] -o with out-of-range number produces incomprehensible error

Submitter:  Dave <barx>
Submitted:  Mon 24 Jul 2023 10:39:19 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  Driver grops Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  Warning/Suspicious behaviour Status:  Confirmed
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  None
Open/Closed:  Open Planned Release:  None
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Fri 04 Aug 2023 06:59:32 PM UTC, comment #1: 

Can reproduce with groff 1.23.0 final.

This might be a good time to adopt neatroff's `.%` register, which stores the page sequence number, introduce this concept to our implementation and documentation, and fasten the `-o` option to it.

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Mon 24 Jul 2023 10:39:19 PM UTC, original submission:  


$ groff --version | head -1
GNU groff version 1.22.4
$ echo Hello. | groff -o2 | wc
    202     577    3664
$ groff-latest --version | head -1
GNU groff version 1.23.0.rc4.19-96b92-dirty
$ echo Hello. | groff-latest -o2 | wc
grops:<standard input>:5: fatal error: 'V' command invalid before first 'p' command
      0       0       0
$ echo Hello. | groff-latest -o1 | wc
    267     820    6662

This post-rc4 build is not quite the same as the released groff 1.23, but by this point I believe there were no further code changes before the release, so I suspect (but have not built 1.23 to confirm) that this bug is in the release.

In the -o2 case, the user is asking for a page that doesn't exist, so an error is not unwarranted.  But the error generated gives little clue what the problem is.  Groff 1.22.4 produced no error here, emitting a PostScript document with no pages--which may not be the ideal outcome either but I think is slightly better than the incomprehensible diagnostic, and is arguably giving the user precisely what they asked for.

Someone testing rc3 came across similar error message (http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2023-02/msg00133.html).  This turned out to be contingent on a specific setting of the $GROFF_ENCODING environment variable.  My environment does not have this variable (nor any other GROFF environment variable) set.

(Found this issue while poking into http://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-groff/2023-07/msg00144.html)

Dave <barx>
Group Member

 

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    Follow 2 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2023-08-04 gbranden Summary-o with out-of-range number produces incomprehensible error [grops] -o with out-of-range number produces incomprehensible error
    2023-08-04 gbranden StatusNone Confirmed

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