groff_char.7 manpage broken

[joerg van den hoff]

re the below issue (reported in previous mail):

`man -d groff_char' says:

  (cd "/opt/local/man" && (echo ".ll 14.3i"; echo ".nr LL 14.3i"; /usr/bin/gunzip -c 
'/opt/local/man/man7/groff_char.7.gz') | /usr/bin/tbl | /usr/bin/groff -Wall -mtty-char -Tascii 
-mandoc -c | (/usr/bin/less -is || true))

so `man' uses the system-install of `tbl' and `groff' (rather than the macports-installed groff 
package). this seems to be the issue: changing `tbl' to the macports variant (system groff
is at 1.19, macports' groff at 1.22.4) and adding `-R' to the `less' options leads to a seemingly 
sane display. this looks like some post-1.19 change to `tbl' broke backwards compatibility.

so it's not the man page that is broken but the `man' pipeline using "wrong" `tbl'. this in turn
seems to point to man.conf (5). the file /private/etc/man.conf indeed contains absolute paths to
system `tbl', `groff' etc. question: is this the user's responsibility to adjust that file or should 
macports `man' take  care of this via including `man -C private_man.conf' into the constructed 
pipeline and putting the correct (macports) paths there?

best,
joerg

====original mail====

this concerns the `groff' package: `man groff_char' is broken (again, I believe, after having worked 
correctly some time ago).

`man groff_char' first lists a bunch of `tbl' warnings and the then displayed manpage
does not display any of the tables supposed to give the overview of "available glyphs on the 
currently used output device" (terminal, usually, but possibly postscript). look, e.g. for 
"Ligatures and Other Latin Glyphs". does neither work for terminal output nor for postscript (`man -t').

this is on 10.15.7 with groff @1.22.4_6.