Re: Cannot select font 'C'; add a missing hint

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:44:54 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.general
Message-ID	<20260414064454.3bgsp745kbdmtmrx@illithid>

At 2026-04-13T19:30:00+0000, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:
>   A hint to users about avoiding such warnings is to add an
>   explanation, something like
> 
> add ".if n .ftr C R" to "man.local"

It makes about as much sense to just shut font warnings off.

MANROFFOPT=-W font

Or one could add a `warn` request to "man.local".

.warn 0

One might prefer just to shut off the "font" warning category.

.warn \n[.warn]-131072

Illustration:

$ ~/groff-1.24.1/bin/nroff
.ft C
troff:<standard input>:1: warning: cannot select font 'C'
.nr w \n[.warn]-131072
.warn \nw
.ft C
.nf
Hello, world!
.pl \n[nl]u
<EOF>
Hello, world!

I am reminded about how it might be nice to extend the `warn` request's
syntax to support chmod(1)-style expressions.

.warn -font
.warn =all
.warn =w-font
.warn =all+style-missing

As I recall, Dave and I have spitballed this but I don't see a Savannah
ticket for it.

(The "style" category is forthcoming in groff 1.25.)

>   Similar for other warnings about fonts.

If you want to take a "similar" approach to "other warnings about
fonts", the foregoing are better solutions than accumulating a laundry
list of font remappings as one encounters documents' futile attempts to
switch to typesetter fonts on terminal devices.

In my opinion a better approach is for a document maintainer to inspect
the site of the warning, figure out what it was the author was trying to
achieve, and adapt appropriately to the more limited capabilities of
terminal devices.

Regards,
Branden

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