pdfroff generating blank output

[Brian Inglis]

On 2024-11-11 13:33, John Ousterhout via Cygwin wrote:
> As  of this morning the behavior of pdfroff under Cygwin seems to have
> changed for me: the PDF output that it produces is (often) blank:
> * It seems to have the right number of pages, but all of the pages are blank.
> * I tried several different viewers including Adobe Acrobat, the PDF
> displayer in Firefox, and the PDF displayer in VSCode; all show the
> same blank output.
> * Historically pdfroff has worked consistently for me with no
> problems. Files that produce blank output today worked fine in the
> past (perhaps a few months ago?).
> * The behavior is not totally consistent: some files still work while
> others don't. After poking around a bit, I was able to find a
> single-line change that flips the behavior between working and not
> working. I have attached the file (homa.7), which can be compiled with
> "pdfroff -man homa.7 > homa.pdf". In its current form, this file
> generates blank output for me. But, if I delete line 561 (".IR
> max_incoming /(N+1).") then the file generates viewable output.
> * In cases where the output is blank, I tried using "groff -T ascii"
> instead, and this produces fine output.
> 
> I am also attaching output from "cygcheck -s -v -r > cygcheck.out", in
> case that sheds some light.
> 
> Any help would be much appreciated; is it possible that I am doing
> something wrong?

As pdfroff is a shell script, you can run it with `sh -vx /bin/pdfroff ...` to 
see what it is doing;
append ` |& tee pdfroff-blank.log` to capture the output, to get help here about 
what it is doing;
ask on the groff list groff@gnu.org, report a bug to groff@gnu.org based on:

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/PROBLEMS
and
	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/BUG-REPORT

or on the bug tracker:

	https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=groff

As this is Windows, sometimes weird stuff happens, so updating Cygwin packages, 
and/or reboot, sometimes fix unexpected weirdness.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis              Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte                   Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter  not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer     but when there is no more to cut
                                 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry