Re: 14/46: groff(7): Add subsection "Special fonts".

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Sat, 20 Dec 2025 19:44:02 -0600

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.general
Message-ID	<20251221014402.ujpsp3foieusitgs@illithid>

Hi Deri,

At 2025-12-07T13:45:32+0000, Deri wrote:
> On Sunday, 7 December 2025 08:35:40 GMT G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > gbranden pushed a commit to branch master
> > in repository groff.
> > 
> > commit 6ae1e6ca7b8356d39d2dc0289dffa9a348273692
> > Author: G. Branden Robinson <[email protected]>
> > AuthorDate: Sat Dec 6 04:39:01 2025 -0600
> > 
> >     groff(7): Add subsection "Special fonts".
> > 
> >     ...synced from our Texinfo manual.
> > ---
> 
> It may be worth mentioning (or pointing to) the information regarding
> the interaction between special font and the .*char commands,
> particularly the fact that any "fallback" definitions with .schar will
> prevent groff finding the glyph in the fonts defined as "special" in
> the DESC file. (This prevents groff from finding the real glyph for
> users who have installed a more comprehensive symbol font (such as
> SymbolA, which contains all the glyphs we mark as fallbacks) and
> update their DESC file to replace "S" with "SymbolA".  Currently the
> only way to avoid the uglier fallback is to include .special SymbolA
> in every document, but this would make it non-portable on systems
> which do not have SymbolA installed.

I agree, but before I can rewrite this part of our manual (which is
proving to be the last, or nearly the last, to fall to my editor's pen),
I'll need to completely understand the character resolution process, as
well as, I suspect, some deeper, sneakier internal stuff that I just
blundered into yesterday.

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?67703

> It is a shame .schars operate before "the already mounted (DESC)
> special fonts".

Yes; I see more requests/features on the horizon for further
configurability of character-to-glyph resolution.

Regards,
Branden

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