[Okular-devel] [Bug 244894] New: Okular should be able to display ditroff output.

[Christopher Yeleighton]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244894

           Summary: Okular should be able to display ditroff output.
           Product: okular
           Version: 0.9.5
          Platform: openSUSE RPMs
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: wishlist
          Priority: NOR
         Component: New backend wishes
        AssignedTo: okular-devel at kde.org
        ReportedBy: giecrilj at stegny.2a.pl


Version:           0.9.5 (using KDE 4.3.5) 
OS:                Linux

Manual pages for legacy Unix tools use a special macro language that produces
intermediate graphic output called ditroff.  The on-line viewer for such pages,
called gxditview, is defective in many ways: it does not support copying and
searching text and the viewing commands are unlike in other KDE programs.  It
also cannot display localized pages. [1]
The KDE alternative for gxditview is kio_man, a virtual device that allows
viewing legacy manual pages as Web pages.  However, there is little chance that
it will ever produce acceptable output for all manual pages, especially in view
of the fact that such pages can use internal custom macros while the man2html
engine behind kio_man can process only predefined macros.  There are pages such
as ftp(1) that use predefined macros only but they still display wrong text
under kio_man because it does not support all required constructs properly. 
Moreover, man2html generates invalid HTML code (Bug 238534) and it seems to be
more straightforward to support ditroff than to fix man2html.
Therefore I find it desirable for Okular to support ditroff output where the
ditroff device would be a suitable X11 device or a special device for Ocular
(which would have to be added to groff, but this can be done administratively
without patching groff source).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. groff '-TX100' '-X' '-mandoc' 'groff/src/devices/grolbp/grolbp.n' '-z'
>'grolbp.dit'
2. desktop-lanuch 'grolbp.dit'
3. Choose "Okular".

Actual Results:  
2. "Choose program" dialog box.
3. Okular cannot open this file.

Expected Results:  
2. Okular should launch and invoke the ditroff backend to display the manual
page.

OS: Linux (x86_64) release 2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop
Compiler: gcc

[1] <URL:http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-groff/2010-06/msg00019.html>

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