[bug #58036] Feature request: consistent "download" format

[Dave]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?58036>

                 Summary: Feature request: consistent "download" format
                 Project: GNU troff
            Submitted by: barx
            Submitted on: Tue 24 Mar 2020 04:59:45 AM CDT
                Category: Device - others
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: New feature
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

In a post to the groff email list
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2020-02/msg00058.html>, Tadziu notes
some quirks of the "download" files for different devices (typically installed
in /usr/share/groff/current/font/dev*/download):


grops (devps) is okay with

Symbol path/to/Symbol.pfa

but gropdf (devpdf) requires tabs as field separators
(see the gropdf manual page):

<tab>Symbol<tab>path/to/Symbol.pfa

where <tab> is an actual tab character.


grops wants .pfa files (which you can create from .pfb files
using pfbtops) and requires _relative_ paths, but for gropdf
[an absolute path] also appears to work


These differences seem capricious and unnecessary, serving only to trip up
unwary users.  Ideally all "download" files would use a consistent format; for
maximum flexibility, it would allow both kinds of white space, and both kinds
of pathnames.




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