Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
[remembering the attachment his time]
We are pleased to announce the availability of groff 1.23.0. Obtain it
from the GNU mirror network,
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/groff/groff-1.23.0.tar.gz
or, if the network is for some reason inoperative, directly from GNU.
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/groff-1.23.0.tar.gz
Ensure the integrity of your download by checking this source code
archive's cryptographic signature; see "Obtaining groff" below.
What is groff?
==
groff (GNU roff) is a typesetting system that reads plain text input
files that include formatting commands to produce output in PostScript,
PDF, HTML, or DVI formats or for display to a terminal. Formatting
commands can be low-level typesetting primitives, macros from a
supplied package, or user-defined macros. All three approaches can be
combined.
A reimplementation and extension of the typesetter from AT Unix, groff
is present on most POSIX systems owing to its long association with Unix
manuals (including man pages). It and its predecessor are notable for
their production of several best-selling software engineering texts.
groff is capable of producing typographically sophisticated documents
while consuming minimal system resources.
https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/
Changes
===
Changes since the most recent release candidate, 1.23.0.rc4, comprise
about 250 commits' worth of changes to documentation, including over
1,000 lines of updates to each of doc/groff.texi (our Texinfo manual)
and the man pages groff_diff(7), groff_mm(7), and eqn(1).
Since groff 1.22.4 was released in December 2018, 28 people have made a
total of over 5,000 commits.
$ git shortlog --summary 1.22.4..1.23.0
14 Bertrand Garrigues
14 Bjarni Ingi Gislason
2 Bruno Haible
6 Colin Watson
1 Cynthia A. E. Livingston
1 Damian McGuckin
31 Dave Kemper
29 Deri James
2 Dorai Sitaram
1 Edmond Orignac
1 Eric Allman
4778 G. Branden Robinson
1 George HELFFRICH
33 Ingo Schwarze
1 John Gardner
4 Keith Bostic
25 Keith Marshall
2 Michael J. Karels
1 Nate Bargmann
3 Nikita Ivanov
1 Paul Eggert
71 Peter Schaffter
1 Samanta Navarro
1 T. Kurt Bond
3 Tadziu Hoffmann
1 Thomas Dupond
2 ivan tkachenko
1 наб
(Some possibly surprising names in the above are due to a rebase of
groff me(7) against 4.4BSD.)
Headline features nominated by our development community include:
* a new 'man' macro, "MR", for formatting man page cross references;
* hyperlinked text in terminals via the ECMA-48 OSC 8 escape sequence;
* a new 'rfc1345' macro package, contributed by Dorai Sitaram,
enabling use of RFC 1345 mnemonics as groff special characters;
* a new 'sboxes' macro package, contributed by Deri James, enabling
'ms' documents to place shaded and/or bordered rectangles underneath
any groff page elements (PDF output only);
* 'mom' 2.5, a macro package contributed by Peter Schaffter;
* the 'ms' package's new strings to assist subscripting;
* Italian localization, including hyphenation patterns and macro
package string translations, thanks to Edmond Orignac; and
* new hyphenation patterns for English.
For more on these and other feature changes, see "News" below.
Much attention has been given to fixing bugs, improving diagnostic
messages, and correcting and expanding documentation. The previous
release shipped with three automated unit tests; this one ships with
over 160 unit and regression tests.
As of this writing, per the GNU Savannah bug tracker, the groff project
has resolved 432 problems as fixed for the 1.23.0 release. Some of the
bugs we've corrected were over 30 years old.
Classifying these issues by type and the component of the project to
which they apply, we find the following.
Type Component
-
Build/installation 39 Core 102
Crash/unresponsive 11 Driver: grohtml 7
Documentation 111 Driver: gropdf 10
Feature change 41 Driver: grops 2
Incorrect behavior 131 Driver: grotty 4
Lint 15 Driver: others/general 7
Rendering/cosmetics 10 Font: devpdf1
Test 6 Font: devps 3
Warning/suspicious behavior 67 Font: others/general4
General51
Macros: man33
Macros: mdoc 15
Macros: me 36
Macros: mm 20
Macros: mom
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
Hi Bertrand, At 2023-07-07T00:31:57+0200, Bertrand Garrigues wrote: > Ah, I've completely forgotten your ANNOUNCE file... If it helps, I'm attaching a copy of what I used to announce the release to the Debian bug tracking system. > The ANNOUNCE file fits perfectly well to the job, so I'll use it. > I'll just swap the 1st and 2nd paragraph (normal people usually want > to know what the software is about before actually downloading it). Yes--I dithered over that. The release per se is the "news" item and should be the "lede" in journalistic parlance, but for the reader who doesn't know what "groff" is, such a lede is not enlightening. > Well both, I've allowed myself a drop of Armagnac (it's like cognac, > but even better) and brewed a cup of Taiwanese Oolong (semi-fermented) > tea... Cheers! Very nice! I sent a friend of mine a bottle of Armagnac when he got his Ph.D.-- but I've still never had any! But I don't sip cognac often--I like it, but it's pretty sweet. 20 years ago, 2 fellow Debian developers, of whom Colin Watson was one, introduced me to the joys of single-malt Scotch... Best regards, Branden signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
Hi Branden, On mer., juil. 05 2023 at 05:11:37 , "G. Branden Robinson" wrote: [...] > If what I'm using as a template in the ANNOUNCE file[A] doesn't fit what > you want to say, then I'd suggest adding the following, though I don't > insist on either of them. Ah, I've completely forgotten your ANNOUNCE file... [...] > I do grant that if you include both of the above, a modification of > your 1.22.4 release announcement will look more like than unlike the > "ANNOUNCE" template. > > The writing of promotional copy is not my strong suit, but my concern > here is to ensure that users of groff 1.22.4 are not lacking reasons to > upgrade, so I think it is worth going to a little trouble to flog > 1.23.0's advantages: not just more features, but more testing, more > documentation, and a better quality of life for our community. The ANNOUNCE file fits perfectly well to the job, so I'll use it. I'll just swap the 1st and 2nd paragraph (normal people usually want to know what the software is about before actually downloading it). > (On that high note, I should probably go re-watch _Glengarry Glen > Ross_ to remind myself what salesmen are really like...) > Above all, _thank you_ for being the groff maintainer and working to > make this release possible! Let me know what sort of fermented or > distilled beverage you enjoy. :) Well both, I've allowed myself a drop of Armagnac (it's like cognac, but even better) and brewed a cup of Taiwanese Oolong (semi-fermented) tea... Cheers! The announcement will be sent in a few minutes. Regards, Bertrand
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
Bravo to everybody involved!! Seriously, I can't express just how good it feels to see a long-awaited release finally be published to the world. :) On Thu, 6 July 2023, 8:12 am G. Branden Robinson, < g.branden.robin...@gmail.com> wrote: > At 2023-07-05T23:31:54+0200, Bertrand Garrigues wrote: > > I've pushed tag 1.23.0 and published the archive on > > https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/ > > Rock and roll, and good times! > > > For the announcement email I'll send the mail to info-...@gnu.org as you > > don't have the official maintainer title yet. > > Ah! If I had known it was sender-restricted, I'd forgotten. > > > There are some guidelines > > to follow [1], basically a short presentation, then were to get the > > soft, then the NEWS file. > > I see--I hadn't actually read that section before. I do note that it > says only what should be included, and doesn't discourage us from saying > more, which my announcement template admittedly does. > > > You can see my previous announcement here [2], I intend to write > > something similar and mentioning you as the lead developer. Do you > > see any important things to add? > > If what I'm using as a template in the ANNOUNCE file[A] doesn't fit what > you want to say, then I'd suggest adding the following, though I don't > insist on either of them. > > 1. Use the description of groff that is now synchronized between our > home page, Texinfo manual, and man pages. > > --- > groff (GNU roff) is a typesetting system that reads plain text > input files that include formatting commands to produce output in > PostScript, PDF, HTML, or DVI formats or for display to a terminal. > Formatting commands can be low-level typesetting primitives, macros > from a supplied package, or user-defined macros. All three > approaches can be combined. > > A reimplementation and extension of the typesetter from AT Unix, > groff is present on most POSIX systems owing to its long association > with Unix manuals (including man pages). It and its predecessor are > notable for their production of several best-selling software > engineering texts. groff is capable of producing typographically > sophisticated documents while consuming minimal system resources. > --- > > 2. Incorporate the "Changes" section from the "ANNOUNCE" file. I think > it useful for at least two reasons: it summarizes the gigantic > amount (nearly 700 lines) of "NEWS" for this release; it underscores > the emphasis on quality of implementation. May I be excused some > pride in our delivery of over 400 bug fixes and 150 automated tests? > > I do grant that if you include both of the above, a modification of > your 1.22.4 release announcement will look more like than unlike the > "ANNOUNCE" template. > > The writing of promotional copy is not my strong suit, but my concern > here is to ensure that users of groff 1.22.4 are not lacking reasons to > upgrade, so I think it is worth going to a little trouble to flog > 1.23.0's advantages: not just more features, but more testing, more > documentation, and a better quality of life for our community. > > (On that high note, I should probably go re-watch _Glengarry Glen Ross_ > to remind myself what salesmen are really like...) > > Above all, _thank you_ for being the groff maintainer and working to > make this release possible! Let me know what sort of fermented or > distilled beverage you enjoy. :) > > > [1] https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Announcements.html > > [2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-12/msg00015.html > > Best regards, > Branden > > [A] > https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/ANNOUNCE?id=198346d187de9e340bbf9d4f80c2dc4d42f5f74e >
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
On Thursday, 6 July 2023 02:02:39 BST Peter Schaffter wrote: > On Wed, Jul 05, 2023, Dave Kemper wrote: > > On 7/5/23, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > > May I be excused some > > > pride in our delivery of over 400 bug fixes and 150 automated tests? > > > > Fully justified. I'm glad it's finally out in the world. Thank you > > for your tireless work in making groff more featureful, more portable, > > better documented, and less buggy. > > Hear, hear! Well done.
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
As an ordinary user and lurker on this list, it has been extraordinary to watch this release come together. Congratulations! Robert Goulding Sent from my phone On Wed, Jul 5, 2023, 10:36 PM Steve Izma wrote: > On Wed, Jul 05, 2023 at 07:31:50PM -0500, Dave Kemper wrote: > > Subject: Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status > > > > On 7/5/23, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > > May I be excused some > > > pride in our delivery of over 400 bug fixes and 150 automated > tests? > > > > Fully justified. I'm glad it's finally out in the world. Thank you > > for your tireless work in making groff more featureful, more portable, > > better documented, and less buggy. > > Yes, all this work is very much appreciated. Thanks again. > > -- Steve > > -- > Steve Izma > - > Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2H 1W6 > E-mail: si...@golden.net phone: 519-745-1313 > cell (text only; not frequently checked): 519-998-2684 > > == > The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and > therefore never scrutinize or question. > -- Stephen Jay Gould, *Full House: The Spread of Excellence >from Plato to Darwin*, 1996 > >
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
On Wed, Jul 05, 2023 at 07:31:50PM -0500, Dave Kemper wrote: > Subject: Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status > > On 7/5/23, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > May I be excused some > > pride in our delivery of over 400 bug fixes and 150 automated tests? > > Fully justified. I'm glad it's finally out in the world. Thank you > for your tireless work in making groff more featureful, more portable, > better documented, and less buggy. Yes, all this work is very much appreciated. Thanks again. -- Steve -- Steve Izma - Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2H 1W6 E-mail: si...@golden.net phone: 519-745-1313 cell (text only; not frequently checked): 519-998-2684 == The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question. -- Stephen Jay Gould, *Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin*, 1996
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
On Wed, Jul 05, 2023, Dave Kemper wrote: > On 7/5/23, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > May I be excused some > > pride in our delivery of over 400 bug fixes and 150 automated tests? > > Fully justified. I'm glad it's finally out in the world. Thank you > for your tireless work in making groff more featureful, more portable, > better documented, and less buggy. Hear, hear! -- Peter Schaffter https://www.schaffter.ca
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
On 7/5/23, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > May I be excused some > pride in our delivery of over 400 bug fixes and 150 automated tests? Fully justified. I'm glad it's finally out in the world. Thank you for your tireless work in making groff more featureful, more portable, better documented, and less buggy.
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
At 2023-07-05T23:31:54+0200, Bertrand Garrigues wrote: > I've pushed tag 1.23.0 and published the archive on > https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/ Rock and roll, and good times! > For the announcement email I'll send the mail to info-...@gnu.org as you > don't have the official maintainer title yet. Ah! If I had known it was sender-restricted, I'd forgotten. > There are some guidelines > to follow [1], basically a short presentation, then were to get the > soft, then the NEWS file. I see--I hadn't actually read that section before. I do note that it says only what should be included, and doesn't discourage us from saying more, which my announcement template admittedly does. > You can see my previous announcement here [2], I intend to write > something similar and mentioning you as the lead developer. Do you > see any important things to add? If what I'm using as a template in the ANNOUNCE file[A] doesn't fit what you want to say, then I'd suggest adding the following, though I don't insist on either of them. 1. Use the description of groff that is now synchronized between our home page, Texinfo manual, and man pages. --- groff (GNU roff) is a typesetting system that reads plain text input files that include formatting commands to produce output in PostScript, PDF, HTML, or DVI formats or for display to a terminal. Formatting commands can be low-level typesetting primitives, macros from a supplied package, or user-defined macros. All three approaches can be combined. A reimplementation and extension of the typesetter from AT Unix, groff is present on most POSIX systems owing to its long association with Unix manuals (including man pages). It and its predecessor are notable for their production of several best-selling software engineering texts. groff is capable of producing typographically sophisticated documents while consuming minimal system resources. --- 2. Incorporate the "Changes" section from the "ANNOUNCE" file. I think it useful for at least two reasons: it summarizes the gigantic amount (nearly 700 lines) of "NEWS" for this release; it underscores the emphasis on quality of implementation. May I be excused some pride in our delivery of over 400 bug fixes and 150 automated tests? I do grant that if you include both of the above, a modification of your 1.22.4 release announcement will look more like than unlike the "ANNOUNCE" template. The writing of promotional copy is not my strong suit, but my concern here is to ensure that users of groff 1.22.4 are not lacking reasons to upgrade, so I think it is worth going to a little trouble to flog 1.23.0's advantages: not just more features, but more testing, more documentation, and a better quality of life for our community. (On that high note, I should probably go re-watch _Glengarry Glen Ross_ to remind myself what salesmen are really like...) Above all, _thank you_ for being the groff maintainer and working to make this release possible! Let me know what sort of fermented or distilled beverage you enjoy. :) > [1] https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Announcements.html > [2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-12/msg00015.html Best regards, Branden [A] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/ANNOUNCE?id=198346d187de9e340bbf9d4f80c2dc4d42f5f74e signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
Hi Branden, On dim., juil. 02 2023 at 01:09:41 , "G. Branden Robinson" wrote: > At 2023-07-02T19:44:32+0200, Bertrand Garrigues wrote: >> If no, I'll tag the official 1.23.0 on the latest sha >> (198346d187de9e340bbf9d4f80c2dc4d42f5f74e), in a few days (let's say >> in 2-3 days). > > Great news--thank you! > > But don't wait on my account! :) If you want to tag it now, that's > fine with me. I can work on the announcement email while you're > assembling the signed release archive and pushing it to the main GNU > distribution site. I've pushed tag 1.23.0 and published the archive on https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/ For the announcement email I'll send the mail to info-...@gnu.org as you don't have the official maintainer title yet. There are some guidelines to follow [1], basically a short presentation, then were to get the soft, then the NEWS file. You can see my previous announcement here [2], I intend to write something similar and mentioning you as the lead developer. Do you see any important things to add? [1] https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Announcements.html [2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-12/msg00015.html Regards, Bertrand
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
Hi Bertrand, At 2023-07-02T19:44:32+0200, Bertrand Garrigues wrote: > Do you have some last-minutes document changes? I do not. > If no, I'll tag the official 1.23.0 on the latest sha > (198346d187de9e340bbf9d4f80c2dc4d42f5f74e), in a few days (let's say > in 2-3 days). Great news--thank you! But don't wait on my account! :) If you want to tag it now, that's fine with me. I can work on the announcement email while you're assembling the signed release archive and pushing it to the main GNU distribution site. Regards, Branden signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
Hi Peter, Hi Branden, On lun., juin 26 2023 at 06:31:45 , Peter Schaffter wrote: > On Mon, Jun 26, 2023, G. Branden Robinson wrote: >> Peter, Bertrand, and I all agreed that the code changes to the mom(7) >> macro package Peter committed to the master branch accidentally earlier >> this month are not sufficiently disruptive to warrant a reset of the >> release cycle > > Quite so. I apologise for my carelessness nonetheless. The last > thing we needed was a hitch in the 1.23 release. That's OK...Normally the 1.23.0 should not have included an update like this one, but your changes were always quite solid; I've made some tests this weekend on 2 different machines (a Ubuntu 22.04 and an Archlinux), and found no issue. So I think we can include your latest version of mom in our final 1.23.0 release. Branden, Do you have some last-minutes document changes? If no, I'll tag the official 1.23.0 on the latest sha (198346d187de9e340bbf9d4f80c2dc4d42f5f74e), in a few days (let's say in 2-3 days). Regards, Bertrand
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
On Mon, Jun 26, 2023, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > Peter, Bertrand, and I all agreed that the code changes to the mom(7) > macro package Peter committed to the master branch accidentally earlier > this month are not sufficiently disruptive to warrant a reset of the > release cycle Quite so. I apologise for my carelessness nonetheless. The last thing we needed was a hitch in the 1.23 release. -- Peter Schaffter https://www.schaffter.ca
Re: a morsel of groff 1.23.0 status
[self-follow-up] At 2023-06-08T17:53:57-0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > I'm happy to report that I've been in touch with our GNU maintainer, > Bertrand. He's facing an email backlog, but I think I was able to > bring him up to speed. We're continuing to grind toward a 1.23.0 final tag. Bertrand has had less time than he hoped, but told me he has carried out some testing and is hopeful for this weekend. Fingers crossed. Peter, Bertrand, and I all agreed that the code changes to the mom(7) macro package Peter committed to the master branch accidentally earlier this month are not sufficiently disruptive to warrant a reset of the release cycle (this would probably mean an rc5). It did not visibly regress the only document that would have been plausibly affected (the "typesetting.mom" example), and, I would guess, amounts to groff 1.23.0 users getting a few more bug fixes than they otherwise would. The master branch remains frozen for code changes but has not been idle. Apart from the mom whoops, here are the files changed since 1.23.0.rc4. This is diffstat(1) output, where the numbers indicate quantities of changed lines. ANNOUNCE| 70 +- ChangeLog | 104 + HACKING | 28 +- INSTALL.extra |2 +- MANIFEST| 17 +- NEWS| 36 +- PROBLEMS| 1222 +++ README | 18 +- contrib/eqn2graph/eqn2graph.1.man |2 +- contrib/gdiffmk/ChangeLog |2 +- contrib/gdiffmk/gdiffmk.1.man | 33 +- contrib/glilypond/glilypond.1.man |4 +- contrib/gperl/gperl.1.man |2 + contrib/grap2graph/grap2graph.1.man |2 +- contrib/mm/ChangeLog| 13 +- contrib/mm/groff_mm.7.man | 2059 ++-- contrib/mm/mmroff.1.man | 16 +- contrib/pic2graph/pic2graph.1.man |2 +- doc/groff.texi | 4567 ++- doc/meintro.me.in |1 - doc/meintro_fr.me.in|1 - doc/meref.me.in |2 +- doc/ms.ms | 65 +- doc/webpage.ms |4 +- font/devutf8/NOTES | 34 +- man/groff.7.man | 1593 +++--- man/groff_char.7.man| 87 +- man/groff_diff.7.man| 3568 - man/groff_out.5.man | 318 +- man/groff_tmac.5.man|9 +- man/roff.7.man | 323 +- src/devices/gropdf/gropdf.1.man | 248 +- src/devices/gropdf/pdfmom.1.man |3 +- src/preproc/eqn/eqn.1.man | 1380 +--- src/preproc/eqn/neqn.1.man |2 +- src/preproc/refer/refer.1.man |2 + src/preproc/tbl/tbl.1.man | 59 +- src/roff/groff/groff.1.man | 47 +- src/roff/nroff/nroff.1.man |2 +- src/roff/troff/TODO |2 - src/roff/troff/troff.1.man | 22 +- src/utils/addftinfo/addftinfo.1.man |7 +- src/utils/afmtodit/afmtodit.1.man | 81 +- src/utils/grog/grog.1.man |2 +- src/utils/lkbib/lkbib.1.man | 23 +- src/utils/lookbib/lookbib.1.man | 17 +- tmac/fallbacks.tmac |2 +- tmac/groff_man.7.man.in | 166 +- tmac/groff_mdoc.7.man |5 +- tmac/groff_me.7.man |4 + tmac/groff_ms.7.man | 33 +- These are all changes to documentation files, plain text files (usually internal, developer-facing documentation), or code comments. (The "PROBLEMS" file saw a large change because I reorganized it in reverse release-chronological order per a suggestion from Bruno Haible.) It's my hope that groff 1.23.0 will be reputed as the best-documented groff release yet. Regards, Branden signature.asc Description: PGP signature
