groff version is too old

[Miek Gieben]

Binary package hint: groff

The version of groff included in Ubuntu is from:
% groff -v
GNU groff version 1.18.1
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

GNU groff is currently at 1.20.

I would like to see this package upgrade. I've build a quick 'n dirty deb for ubuntu, but a clean/supported
package would be better

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

Does the 1.20 version have any specific features you are missing? Are there any situations where you are limited by the current Ubuntu version of groff?

[Miek Gieben (miek)]

Yes, we were running to trouble with psbb macro (I'm no export in groff), but upgrading groff made this
problem(*) go away.

(*) the bounding box of an included eps figure wasn't detected properly, which meant the figure didn't fit on the page.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I know (and have known for a long time). I'm working on it. The delay is due to my desire to avoid regressing support for Japanese speakers. The current package includes a very extensive patch to support CJK languages, which is essentially impossible to forward-port beyond the current version. However, now that 1.20 is out, we're not very far from being able to use a much simpler method to do the same thing, which can actually be accepted upstream. Brian M. Carlson started on this last year, but apparently got stalled; I'm working on finishing the job he started now.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I uploaded groff 1.20.1 to Debian unstable yesterday, and just synced it into Karmic.