[tldoc] troff warning: numeric expression expected (got 't') — processing man page

[Carlos]

On Sat, Apr 22, 2023 at 10:07:16PM +0200, Siep Kroonenberg wrote:
> 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.
> > 
> > 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?
> > 
> >     , 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
> > 
> > A few man pages require extra UTF-8 handling. You can look those up in
> > man1/Makefile if you care. --hope this helps, karl.
> 
> For the ConTeXt man pages, I went directly to pdf:
> 
> for f in $Master/texmf-dist/doc/context/scripts/mkiv/*.man; do
>   echo `basename $f`
>   cp $f $Master/texmf-dist/doc/man/man1/`basename $f .man`.1
>   man -Tpdf $f >$Master/texmf-dist/doc/man/man1/`basename $f`1.pdf
> done
> 
> As I recall, only context.man gave me such a warning. The result
> have A4 papersize, which is apparently the default on my system.
> 

Thank you much Siep. Yes. That definitely will help. I'll keep it
around.

I noticed with ConTeXt setting $MANPATH is a problem though. 

thanks again.

> -- 
> Siep Kroonenberg
> 

-- 
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and
weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes
and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons.
		-- Popular Mechanics, March 1949