[Pkg-tcltk-devel] Bug#1031737: Wrong margin character for changed text in man pages

[Bjarni Ingi Gislason]

Package: tcl8.6-doc
Version: 8.6.13+dfsg-2
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?

  Displaying man page "chan.3tcl" with the next version (candidate) of
groff (1.23.0).

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

(test-nroff is in the git repository)

test-nroff -man -b -ww /tmp/chan.3tcl

   * What was the outcome of this action?

See later

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

  To see '|' at the right margin for changed text.

####

   The macro 'VS' contains the line

.ie n 'mc \s12\(br\s0

1) There is no type size change in nroff mode, so "\s12" does not change
the type size, that is, it stays unchanged.

2) The next version of "groff" (pending) interprets "\s12" as "\s1"
with an added text "2", which means, the digit "2" is printed instead
of "\(br" (same as '|').

  Example from "chan.3tcl":

deletes all existing file-events registered on the channel.  If  2

  and warnings (if the man option "--warnings=w" and environmental
variable "MAN_KEEP_STDERR=yes" are used):

troff: backtrace: '/tmp/chan.3tcl':150: macro 'VS'
troff: backtrace: file '/tmp/chan.3tcl':304
troff:/tmp/chan.3tcl:304: warning: expected numeric expression, got a
special character
troff: backtrace: '/tmp/chan.3tcl':150: macro 'VS'
troff: backtrace: file '/tmp/chan.3tcl':352
troff:/tmp/chan.3tcl:352: warning: expected numeric expression, got a
special character

###

  The fix is to drop the type size change and use

.ie n 'mc \(br

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.1.7-1 (SMP w/2 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN
Locale: LANG=is_IS.iso88591, LC_CTYPE=is_IS.iso88591 (charmap=ISO-8859-1), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

tcl8.6-doc depends on no packages.

tcl8.6-doc recommends no packages.

Versions of packages tcl8.6-doc suggests:
ii  tcl8.6  8.6.13+dfsg-2

-- no debconf information