Re: Syntax errors in makeindex.1

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Mon, 13 Apr 2026 02:34:45 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.general,gmane.comp.tex.tex-k
Message-ID	<20260413073445.4i36tu25co6fn63i@illithid>

[self-follow-up]

At 2026-04-13T00:39:42-0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> I can reproduce the problem with my working copy of groff, which
> previews groff 1.25 and offers a little more information.
> 
> $ nroff --version | head -n 1
> GNU nroff (groff) version 1.24.1.402-374b0-modified
> $ zcat $(man -w makeindex) | nroff -man -z
> troff:<standard input>:576: error: cannot open font description file 'C': No such file or directory
> troff:<standard input>:576: warning: cannot select font 'C' [-w font]
> ...
> troff:<standard input>:1122: warning: cannot select font 'C' [-w font]
> 
> The second warning repeats many times, so I abbreviated the output.
> (The initial error message does not appear in released versions of
> groff.  For inside baseball, see below.[4])

There _is_ an element of this output I didn't intend, namely the
quantity of warnings about the same unselectable font.

Other people noticed that too during the groff 1.24 development
cycle,[1] and I thought I had it cracked.  Observe what happens when we
_typeset_ the same man page, instead of merely formatting it for a
terminal (using "groff" instead of "nroff").

$ zcat $(man -w makeindex) | groff -man -z
troff:<standard input>:576: warning: font name 'C' is deprecated [-w font]

Evidently I solved the problem in one case but not the other.

Not intentional.  Sorry about that.

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2024-10/msg00066.html

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