[tldoc] Subject: Re: troff warning: numeric expression expected ? (got 't') â?? processing man page?

[Carlos]

On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 04:26:08PM -0600, Karl Berry wrote:
> Hi Carlos,
> 
>     But when I ran it it kept spitting out on stdout the troff warning:
>     numeric expression expected (got 't') message
> 
> 1) You don't say what man page you're running groff on, or your exact
> invocation.

Currently, any man page. 

> 
> 2) As I recall, I also get that warning (and others) on some of the man
> pages. I ignore them.
> 
> 3) Isn't the output still reasonable?
> 

Not when there's an unwanted blank page that I just can't seem to remove
by any possible means either through mdoc mandoc or man 

.bp only creates a new page as far as I know and that's what any
invocation in any form would do thereafter 

Unless there's a workaround with an .if clause which I'm unaware
of… and If you know of one to invoke (or a similarly workaround
and get rid of a blank page) let me know please.


>     , a `proprietary` code while processing it
> 
> There is nothing "proprietary" in any man page in TL, as far as I know.
> 
>     Is this the case with any man page provided on TeX Live ? 
> 
> The man pages in TL are as written by the individual contributors. Thus
> they do not conform to any single pattern. The way they are written
> varies widely.
> 
>     If not, what would be the correct macros to run it alongside groff
>     successfully so I can have a pdf :)
> 
> As specified in Master/texmf-dist/doc/man/Makefile (not
> distributed, as I recall, only in svn), the invocation turns out to be
> this, for tex.1:
> groff -man -t -rS11 man1/tex.1 | ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=a4 - man1/tex.man1.pdf.tmp && mv man1/tex.man1.pdf.tmp man1/tex.man1.pdf || rm man1/tex.man1.pdf.tmp
> 
> Which looks more complicated than it is, since half of it is worrying
> about the unlikely case when the groff|ps2pdf pipe fails. The short
> form, running in the directory with the man page, would be:
> groff -man -t -rS11 tex.1 | ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=a4 - tex.man1.pdf

Thanks Karl. On a spare system I have,  it goes through without an
issue, but the earlier remark with the unwanted page still stands
with the other system I've been having the problem with

> 
> A few man pages require extra UTF-8 handling. You can look those up in
> man1/Makefile if you care. --hope this helps, karl.
> 
> 

-- 
You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long
when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to
make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie
chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one.