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

[Carlos]

On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:30:27AM -0400, Carlos 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.
> 
> 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.

Excluding external tools of course, — although it may come handy
— such as qpdf that would remove the first blank page altogether
if necessary. (Thought of mentioning this, just to clarify it)

> 
> 
> >     , 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.
> 
> 

-- 
Reactor error - core dumped!