[comp.text] TranScript 2.1 bug/misfeature

mark@sickkids.UUCP (Mark Bartelt) (01/17/89)

We recently switched from version 2.0 to 2.1 of TranScript.  The new
version exhibits a rather annoying strange new feature.

I generally use the CourierBold font to print documents when I want a
constant-width font.  This always worked correctly under 2.0, but under
2.1 it does an odd thing when it's confronted with the vertical bar (|)
character.  Consider the following two-line troff input files:

  [foo]   .ft 8                      [bar]   .ft 8
          foo!bar!spam                        foo|bar|spam

Actually, the '!' could be anything, other than '|'.  If you look at
what psroff produces, you see the following:

  [foo]   8 f                         [bar]   8 f
          555 96(foo!bar!spam)N               555 96(foo)N
                                              9 f
                                              (|)S
                                              8 f
                                              (bar)S
                                              9 f
                                              (|)S
                                              8 f
                                              (spam)S

The question is, why is it switching to font 9 for the '|' character,
when font 8 has a perfectly good one of its own?  One needs to look at
the actual output of ditroff (invoked with -Tpsc) to see what's going
on:

  [foo]   cf
          48o48o48!48b48a48r48!48s48p48a48mn96 0

  [bar]   cf
          48o48o48|16b48a48r48|16s48p48a48mn96 0

                   ^^          ^^
                   eh?         eh?

This peculiarity seems to occur *only* with the vertical bar character.
The problem isn't with ditroff, since under PostScript 2.0 the latter
produced:

  [bar]   cf
          48o48o48|48b48a48r48|48s48p48a48mn96 0

Does anyone know offhand what/where the problem is, and (I hope!) how
to fix it?  Yes, I could RTFC, but I'd prefer not to if someone knows
the answer off the top of his/her head.  Thanks in advance.

Mark Bartelt                          UUCP: {utzoo,decvax}!sickkids!mark
Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto   BITNET: mark@sickkids.utoronto
416/598-6442                          INTERNET: mark@sickkids.toronto.edu