Hi Branden, On 2023-08-12 03:48, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > Hi Alex, > > At 2023-08-12T02:02:49+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: >> On 2023-08-07 18:21, Brian Inglis wrote: >>>>> $ pwd >>>>> /home/alx/src/linux/man-pages/man-pages/6.04/scripts/LinuxManBook >>>>> $ ./BuildLinuxMan.pl ../../ >>>>> [...] >>>>> Failed to open 'DESC' >>> >>> That annoyingly minimal message provoked the patch submitted. >> >> Yeah; it took me some time to find the cause. The error message >> doesn't even tell who failed --was it the shell, was it gropdf, was it >> troff?--. >> >> :) > > This sort of thing makes me purple with rage and I have tried to purge > groff of such unhelpful diagnostics--especially those that are uttered > furtively by programs (or, worse, libraries) that attempt to remain > anonymous. Doug McIlroy was telling people to cut this crap out in 1986 > (or maybe a decade before that, even) and people _still_ ignore him. > > https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf (p. 9) Hmm, that was an interesting read. It explains a few inconsistencies in the design of UNIX that I didn't understand. I didn't know pipes came so late into the timeline. :) Cheers, Alex > > Much work was done on groff 1.23 to fix this, but I'm not certain all > such offenders have been rehabilitated. > > https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?52463 > > When you encounter one, strike it with lightning. > > Regards, > Branden -- <http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/> GPG key fingerprint: A9348594CE31283A826FBDD8D57633D441E25BB5
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