Follow-up Comment #4, bug #67013 (group groff): At 2025-04-21T18:23:39-0400, Dave wrote: > Follow-up Comment #2, bug #67013 (group groff): > > The NEWS item seems to understate the magnitude of the change. > > I've never passed a PAGE value to "configure" when building groff, and > my built troffs have always produced US-letter pages by default--until > now. My latest build now has troff producing A4 pages by default. > > This could be blamed on my system's /etc/papersize, a three-byte file > containing "a4" followed by a newline. But groff has never before > used this value in /etc/papersize (which has remained unchanged since > at least 2020), and nothing in this NEWS item suggests it will now. > > NEWS should be more explicit about this change, or it'll catch some > percentage of users unaware.
At 2025-04-21T18:34:23-0400, Dave wrote: > Follow-up Comment #3, bug #67013 (group groff): > > I don't actually know for certain that this commit was to blame; I > last built groff a month ago, and many changes have been committed > since then. But this is the only commit message in the past month to > mention paper, and one of only two to mention DESC (where the default > paper size is stored). > > Regardless, NEWS should be more explicit about this behavior change > regardless of which commit implemented it. This _is_ the behavior I would now expect. But can you check your "configure" log for me? I'm interested in a line like this. I'll provide a few dozen lines of trailing context since the script generates a lot of output. checking default paper format... letter (inferred from /etc/papersize) checking for existing troff installation... no checking file name prefix of system macro packages... (none) checking for system macro packages to make available... (none) checking separator character to use in groff search paths... : checking for gs... gs checking for pnmcrop... found checking for pamcut... found checking for pnmtopng... found checking for pnmtops... found checking for ps2ps... found checking for URW fonts in Type 1/PFB format... found in /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/ checking for options to make PNM tools quiet... -quiet checking whether pnmtops accepts the '-nosetpage' option... yes checking whether 'make' defines 'RM'... yes checking for a diff program that supports option -D... diff checking whether 'test' supports '-ef' option... yes checking for gs version with good left sidebearing handling... got 9.53.3 (buggy) checking whether we are using the GNU C Library >= 2.1 or uClibc... (cached) yes configure: WARNING: cache variable ac_cv_env_CFLAGS_value contains a newline configure: WARNING: cache variable ac_cv_env_CXXFLAGS_value contains a newline checking that generated files are newer than configure... done configure: creating ./config.status config.status: creating Makefile config.status: creating test-groff config.status: creating src/include/config.h config.status: executing depfiles commands GNU roff version 1.23.0.3134-4bc07 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- installation directory prefix : /home/branden/groff-HEAD It's possible that the recent change synergized with an earlier one. commit 3a4cff5804b28ceec69404ef0b075641d3453bb6 Author: G. Branden Robinson <[email protected]> Date: Wed Aug 16 03:06:17 2023 -0500 m4/groff.m4: Report how paper format is inferred. * m4/groff.m4 (GROFF_PAGE): Slightly refactor, and help users to figure out how the "configure" script decided upon the paper format it did by supplementing the `AC_MSG_RESULT` message. If not falling back to the "letter" default or honoring a command-line setting (e.g., "./configure PAGE=a4"), report which file or command was used to infer the paper locale. Apply DRY principle by using shell variables more. Prompted by discussion with Damian McGuckin on the groff list. <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2023-07/msg00072.html> _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?67013> _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/
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