Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?

     Checking for defects with

[test-][g|n]roff -mandoc -t -K utf8 -ww -b -z <man page>

  [test-groff is a script in the repository for "groff"]

   * What was the outcome of this action?

troff: backtrace: file '<stdin>':463
troff:<stdin>:463: warning: special character 'u7A4D' not defined
troff: backtrace: file '<stdin>':463
troff:<stdin>:463: warning: special character 'u4E39' not defined
troff: backtrace: file '<stdin>':463
troff:<stdin>:463: warning: special character 'u5C3C' not defined

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

     No output (warnings).

-.-

  Remarks and a patch are in the attachments.

  The concerned man page was autogenerated.

  Generator: DocBook XSL Stylesheets vsnapshot <http://docbook.sf.net/>

Hello Bjarni,

thank you for the bug report.

You noticed that the man page was "auto"generated by xslt, with
DocBook XSL Stylesheets: this is right.

I shall not apply the patch which you provide, because this patch would
modify the "binary" file crontab.5, not the source file which it depends
on (the source file is available at
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/cron/-/blob/master/debian/crontab.5.xml?ref_type=heads)

If I apply your patch now, you or I would need to create a new patch
every time a modification is made in the source file.

The script test-groff is not part of the Debian distribution, and I am
not aware of any policy about its usage. Please help me if I make a
mistake about it.

Possible solutions to the issues you raised are:

- check other manpages in Debian which were "auto"generated by xslt (it
  is the recommended method now) for similar issues, and file a
  bugreport to developers and maintainers of DocBook XSL Stylesheets

- provide a program to enhance files generated by DocBook XSL
  Stylesheets, in order to pass "test-groff"

----------------------

If you can provide me a link about test-groff, and why this linter
should be taken in account, you are welcome.

Best regards,			Georges.