Re: groff issue after upgrade to NetBSD-9.2

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2022 at 12:10, Steve Blinkhorn <steve%prd.co.uk@localhost> wrote:
>
> Thanks, helpful and enlightening, and I am pursuing the
> Heirloom distribution.  Shame about the name, though, sounds like
> 'legacy' which has come to mean out-of-date.  Troff is one of those
> software designs that far exceeded in its capabilities the purposes
> for which it was originally designed.
>
> But I have to dispute the matter of ordinary users not needing to
> modify files.  The DESC file as distributed supposes a North American
> user base, with the papersize variable set to letter.   This has a
> number of minor implications for layout specification, but also
> results in printers either demanding that letter-size paper be loaded,
> which means at the least fiddling with printer settings to pretend
> that A4 paper is really letter size paper, or in some cases the
> document just not printing in my experience.

I think the general expectation might be users that need to modify
settings take a copy of the relevant groff_font dir and set
GROFF_FONT_PATH

(That doesn't change the fact that NetBSD would benefit from a better
way of managing locally modified files on upgrades :)

David