Re: Problems with .PDFPIC caused by pdfinfo

[Heinz-Jürgen Oertel]

Am Montag, 20. September 2021, 21:39:49 CEST schrieb Keith Marshall:
> On 20/09/2021 19:22, Dave Kemper wrote:
> > Hi Heinz-Jürgen,
> > 
> > Thanks for debugging and submitting a fix for this problem!
> 
> Except that it's not really the most appropriate solution; that was 
> proposed four years ago...
> 
> > In general, when proposing changes to the groff code base, it's best
> > to open a bug report ...
> 
> ...and Bertrand opened a (belated) ticket:
> https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?55107
> 
> which has shown no activity since; (so even open tickets aren't immune 
> to fading into obscurity).
> 
> > Regarding the specific change you've proposed, there may be some
> > resistance to using a grep option that's not part of the POSIX
> > standard for the command.  I'm not sure how widely implemented -a is,
> > or what equivalent solution might be more portable.
> 
> I would go even further ... groff should *not* be calling out to 
> external tools, such as grep — much less pdfinfo — from within core 
> code, in a manner which requires use of unsafe mode, *especially* when 
> core code to achieve the required functionally has been awaiting 
> integration for a number of years!

For me too it would be a better solution to not calling external tools, even 
that's part of the linux/unix philosophy.
As you found out, this small problem does exist for years already. I don't 
remember exactly, but I looked already at the pdfinfo code, but was not able to 
correct it. It seems to be only the pdfinfo used in OpenSuse. 

 Posix grep
https://www.unix.com/man-page/posix/1P/grep/
does not know the -a or --text option.
 
Regards
        Heinz