Colin Watson wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 09:03:00PM -0500, DJ Lucas wrote:
>
>> Other packages in the base LFS utilize BDB. They may or may not work
>> with GDBM so I'll be looking into that as soon as we get updated to
>> reasonable revisions of all installed 'base' software. My question,
>> however, will man-db-2.5.3 allow continued used of BDB in the near future?
>>
> Yes (--with-db=db, or --with-db=dbN for N=1-4), although I can't promise
> to test it very often.
> We use the notorious Debian-patched groff 1.18.1.1 and configure man-db
> with --enable-mb-groff. I'd rather that not be the only possible
> alternative, of course.
>
>
>> My real concern is the version of groff being used. I did not see
>> mention of a current groff version which was *my* original concern. I
>> want to use what works, but I also want to stay as close to upstream as
>> possible for all packages because we (LFS) do not have the development
>> staff that distributions have. Keep in mind that LFS is an educational
>> product, not a 'distribution', though many use it as their
>> 'distribution' of choice. Utilizing Debian's work in this area was
>> great (and will continue to be I think). It allowed Alexander to
>> provide a working setup for almost all cases, and explain in detail the
>> future issues (though the current text, like much of the book ATM, is
>> now out of date).
>>
>
> For staying as close to groff upstream as possible, you probably want to
> use the preconv preprocessor included in CVS groff. That eliminates the
> need for the Debian multibyte patch for most languages. Unfortunately
> there has been no new upstream release of groff since that work was
> done.
>
> The remaining problem is that nobody's yet finished the work on
> character classes in groff, which mean that certain kinds of specialised
> typography don't work: in particular the line-breaking algorithm
> required for Japanese text ("kinsoku shori") isn't implemented. This is
> the reason we're still sticking with the multibyte patch in Debian for
> now, since I want to avoid introducing regressions. I think everything
> other than CJK should work with preconv, although feedback from people
> actually regularly using it wouldn't hurt.
>
>
Thanks for the detailed response Colin. For the immediate future, LFS
will have to stick with your known working method. Maybe later we can
look into backports of groff-cvs.
-- DJ Lucas
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