groff - front-end for the groff document formatting system
groff [ -abcegijklpstzCEGNRSUVXZ ]
[ -d cs ] [ -D arg ] [
-f fam ] [ -F dir ] [
-I dir ] [ -K arg ] [
-L arg ] [ -m name ] [
-M dir ] [ -n num ] [
-o list ] [ -P arg ] [
-r cn ] [ -T dev ] [
-w name ] [ -W name ] [file
. . .] groff -h groff
--help groff -v
[option
. . .] groff
--version [option
. . .]
This document describes the groff program, the main
front-end for the groff
document formatting system. The
groff
program and macro suite is the implementation of a
roff(7) system within the free software collection http://www.gnu.org">GNU. The groff
system has all
features of the classical roff
, but adds many extensions.
The groff program allows control of the whole
groff
system by command-line options. This is a great
simplification in comparison to the classical case (which uses pipes
only).
The command line is parsed according to the usual GNU
convention. Whitespace is permitted between a command-line option and
its argument. Options can be grouped behind a single ‘-’ (minus
character). A filename of - (minus character) denotes
the standard input.
As groff is a wrapper program for troff both programs share a set of options. But the groff program has some additional, native options and gives a new meaning to some troff options. On the other hand, not all troff options can be fed into groff.
The following options either do not exist for troff or are differently interpreted by groff.
arg
Set default input encoding used by preconv to
arg
. Implies -k.
Preprocess with eqn.
Preprocess with grn.
Preprocess with grap. Implies -p.
Print a help message.
dir
This option may be used to specify a directory to search for files (both those on the command line and those named in .psbb and .so requests, and \X'ps: import' , \X'ps: file' and \X'pdf: pdfpic' escapes). The current directory is always searched first. This option may be specified more than once; the directories are searched in the order specified. No directory search is performed for files specified using an absolute path. This option implies the -s option.
Preprocess with chem. Implies -p.
Preprocess with preconv. This is run before any other preprocessor. Please refer to preconv's manual page for its behaviour if no -K (or -D) option is specified.
arg
Set input encoding used by preconv to arg
.
Implies -k.
Send the output to a spooler program for printing. The command that should be used for this is specified by the print command in the device description file, see groff_font(5). If this command is not present, the output is piped into the lpr(1) program by default. See options -L and -X.
arg
Pass arg
to the spooler program. Several arguments should be
passed with a separate -L option each. Note that groff
does not prepend ‘-’ (a minus sign) to arg
before passing it to
the spooler program.
Don't allow newlines within eqn
delimiters. This is the same
as the -N option in eqn.
Preprocess with pic.
-option
-option
-P
arg
Pass -option
or -option arg
to the postprocessor.
The option must be specified with the necessary preceding minus
sign(s)
‘$*’
or
‘$*’
because groff does not prepend any dashes before passing it to the postprocessor. For example, to pass a title to the gxditview postprocessor, the shell command
groff -X -P -title -P 'groff it' foo
is equivalent to
groff -X -Z foo | gxditview -title 'groff it' -
Preprocess with refer. No mechanism is provided for passing arguments to refer because most refer options have equivalent language elements that can be specified within the document. See refer(1) for more details.
Preprocess with soelim.
Safer mode. Pass the -S option to pic and disable the following troff requests: .open, .opena, .pso, .sy, and .pi. For security reasons, safer mode is enabled by default.
Preprocess with tbl.
dev
Set output device to dev
. For this device,
troff generates the intermediate
output
; see groff_out(5). Then
groff calls a postprocessor to convert
troff's intermediate output
to its final
format. Real devices in groff are
- dvi
TeX DVI format (postprocessor is grodvi).
- html
xhtmlHTML and XHTML output (preprocessors are soelim and pre-grohtml, postprocessor is post-grohtml).
- lbp
Canon CAPSL printers (LBP-4 and LBP-8 series laser printers; postprocessor is grolbp).
- lj4
HP LaserJet4 compatible (or other PCL5 compatible) printers (postprocessor is grolj4).
- ps
PostScript output (postprocessor is grops).
Portable Document Format (PDF) output (postprocessor is gropdf).
For the following TTY output devices (postprocessor is always grotty), -T selects the output encoding:
- ascii
7bit
ASCII
.- cp1047
Latin-1 character set for EBCDIC hosts.
- latin1
ISO 8859-1.
- utf8
Unicode character set in UTF-8 encoding. This mode has the most useful fonts for TTY mode, so it is the best mode for TTY output.
The following arguments select gxditview as the ‘postprocessor’ (it is rather a viewing program):
- X75
75 dpi resolution, 10 pt document base font.
- X75-12
75 dpi resolution, 12 pt document base font.
- X100
100 dpi resolution, 10 pt document base font.
- X100-12
100 dpi resolution, 12 pt document base font.
The default device is ps.
Unsafe mode. Reverts to the (old) unsafe behaviour; see option -S.
Output version information of groff and of all programs that are run by it; that is, the given command line is parsed in the usual way, passing -v to all subprograms.
Output the pipeline that would be run by groff (as a wrapper program) on the standard output, but do not execute it. If given more than once, the commands are both printed on the standard error and run.
Use gxditview instead of using the usual postprocessor to (pre)view a document. The printing spooler behavior as outlined with options -l and -L is carried over to gxditview(1) by determining an argument for the -printCommand option of gxditview(1). This sets the default Print action and the corresponding menu entry to that value. -X only produces good results with -Tps, -TX75, -TX75-12, -TX100, and -TX100-12. The default resolution for previewing -Tps output is 75 dpi; this can be changed by passing the -resolution option to gxditview, for example
groff -X -P-resolution -P100 -man foo.1
Suppress output generated by troff. Only error messages are printed.
Do not automatically postprocess groff intermediate output
in the usual manner. This will cause the troff
output
to appear on standard output, replacing the usual
postprocessor output; see groff_out(5).
The following options are transparently handed over to the formatter program troff that is called by groff subsequently. These options are described in more detail in troff(1).
ASCII
approximation of output.
Backtrace on error or warning.
Disable color output. Please consult the grotty(1) man page for more details.
Enable compatibility mode.
cs
name
=s
Define string.
Disable troff error messages.
fam
Set default font family.
dir
Set path for device DESC
files.
Process standard input after the specified input files.
name
Include macro file name.tmac
(or tmac.
name); see
also groff_tmac(5).
dir
Path for macro files.
num
Number the first page num
.
list
Output only pages in list
.
cn
name
=n
Set number register.
name
Enable warning name
. See troff(1) for
names.
name
disable warning name
. See troff(1) for
names.
The groff system
implements the infrastructure of classical
roff; see roff(7) for a survey on how a roff
system works in general. Due to the front-end programs available within
the groff
system, using groff
is much easier than
classical roff
. This section gives an overview of the parts
that constitute the groff
system. It complements
roff(7) with groff
-specific features. This
section can be regarded as a guide to the documentation around the
groff
system.
The virtual
paper size used by troff to
format the input is controlled globally with the requests
.po, .pl, and .ll.
See groff_tmac(5) for the ‘papersize’ macro package
which provides a convenient interface.
The physical
paper size, giving the actual dimensions of the
paper sheets, is controlled by output devices like
grops with the command-line options -p
and -l. See groff_font(5) and the man
pages of the output devices for more details. groff
uses the command-line option -P to pass options to
output devices; for example, the following selects A4 paper in landscape
orientation for the PS device:
groff -Tps -P-pa4 -P-l ...
The groff program is a wrapper around the troff(1) program. It allows one to specify the preprocessors by command-line options and automatically runs the postprocessor that is appropriate for the selected device. Doing so, the sometimes tedious piping mechanism of classical roff(7) can be avoided.
The grog(1) program can be used for guessing the
correct groff
command line to format a file.
The groffer(1) program is an all-around viewer for
groff
files and man pages.
The groff
preprocessors are reimplementations of the
classical preprocessors with moderate extensions. The standard
preprocessors distributed with the groff
package are
for mathematical formulae,
for including gremlin(1) pictures,
for drawing diagrams,
for chemical structure diagrams,
for bibliographic references,
for including macro files from standard locations,
and
for tables.
A new preprocessor not available in classical troff
is
preconv(1) which converts various input encodings to
something groff can understand. It is always run first
before any other preprocessor.
Besides these, there are some internal preprocessors that are automatically run with some devices. These aren't visible to the user.
Macro packages can be included by option -m. The
groff
system implements and extends all classical macro
packages in a compatible way and adds some packages of its own.
Actually, the following macro packages come with groff
:
The traditional man page format; see groff_man(7). It can be specified on the command line as -man or -m man.
The general package for man pages; it automatically recognizes
whether the documents uses the man
or the mdoc
format
and branches to the corresponding macro package. It can be specified on
the command line as -mandoc or
-m mandoc.
The BSD
-style man page format; see
groff_mdoc(7). It can be specified on the command line
as -mdoc or -m mdoc.
The classical me
document format; see
groff_me(7). It can be specified on the command line as
-me or -m me.
The classical mm
document format; see
groff_mm(7). It can be specified on the command line as
-mm or -m mm.
The classical ms
document format; see
groff_ms(7). It can be specified on the command line as
-ms or -m ms.
HTML-like macros for inclusion in arbitrary groff
documents;
see groff_www(7).
Details on the naming of macro files and their placement can be found in groff_tmac(5); this man page also documents some other, minor auxiliary macro packages not mentioned here.
General concepts common to all roff
programming languages
are described in roff(7).
The groff
extensions to the classical troff
language are documented in groff_diff(7).
An overview of language features, including all supported escapes and requests, can be found in groff(7).
The central roff
formatter within the groff
system
is troff(1). It provides the features of both the
classical troff
and nroff
, as well as the
groff
extensions. The command-line option -C
switches troff into compatibility mode
which
tries to emulate classical roff
as much as possible.
There is a shell script nroff(1) that emulates the behavior of classical nroff. It tries to automatically select the proper output encoding, according to the current locale.
The formatter program generates intermediate output
; see
groff_out(7).
In roff
, the output targets are called devices
. A
device can be a piece of hardware, e.g., a printer, or a software file
format. A device is specified by the option -T. The
groff
devices are as follows.
Text output using the ascii(7) character set.
Text output using the EBCDIC code page IBM cp1047 (e.g., OS/390 Unix).
TeX DVI format.
HTML output.
Text output using the ISO Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1) character set; see iso_8859_1(7).
Output for Canon CAPSL printers (LBP-4 and LBP-8 series laser printers).
HP LaserJet4-compatible (or other PCL5-compatible) printers.
PostScript output; suitable for printers and previewers like gv(1).
PDF files; suitable for viewing with tools such as evince(1) and okular(1).
Text output using the Unicode (ISO 10646) character set with UTF-8 encoding; see unicode(7).
XHTML output.
75dpi X Window System output suitable for the previewers xditview(1x) and gxditview(1). A variant for a 12 pt document base font is X75-12.
100dpi X Window System output suitable for the previewers xditview(1x) and gxditview(1). A variant for a 12 pt document base font is X100-12.
The postprocessor to be used for a device is specified by the postpro command in the device description file; see groff_font(5). This can be overridden with the -X option.
The default device is ps.
groff
provides 3 hardware postprocessors:
for some Canon printers,
for printers compatible to the HP LaserJet 4 and PCL5,
for text output using various encodings, e.g., on text-oriented terminals or line printers.
Today, most printing or drawing hardware is handled by the operating system, by device drivers, or by software interfaces, usually accepting PostScript. Consequently, there isn't an urgent need for more hardware device postprocessors.
The groff
software devices for conversion into other
document file formats are
for the DVI format,
for HTML and XHTML formats,
for PostScript.
for PDF.
Combined with the many existing free conversion tools this should be
sufficient to convert a troff
document into virtually any
existing data format.
The following utility programs around groff
are
available.
Add information to troff
font description files for use with
groff
.
Create font description files for PostScript device.
Convert an eqn image into a cropped image.
Mark differences between groff
, nroff
, or
troff
files.
Convert a grap diagram into a cropped bitmap image.
General viewer program for groff
files and man pages.
The groff
X viewer, the GNU
version of
xditview.
Create font description files for lj4 device.
Make inverted index for bibliographic databases.
Search bibliographic databases.
Interactively search bibliographic databases.
Create PDF documents using groff.
Translate a PostScript font in .pfb format to ASCII
.
Convert a pic diagram into a cropped image.
Create font description files for TeX DVI device.
roff
viewer historically distributed with the X Window
System.
Convert X font metrics into GNU
troff
font
metrics.
Normally, the path separator in the following environment variables is the colon; this may vary depending on the operating system. For example, DOS and Windows use a semicolon instead.
GROFF_BIN_PATH
This search path, followed by PATH
, is used for commands
that are executed by groff. If it is not set then the
directory where the groff
binaries were installed is prepended
to PATH
.
GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX
When there is a need to run different roff
implementations
at the same time groff
provides the facility to prepend a
prefix to most of its programs that could provoke name clashings at run
time (default is to have none). Historically, this prefix was the
character g, but it can be anything. For example,
gtroff stood for groff
's
troff, gtbl for the groff
version of tbl. By setting
GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX
to different values, the different
roff
installations can be addressed. More exactly, if it is set
to prefix xxx
then groff as a wrapper program
internally calls xxx
troff instead of
troff. This also applies to the preprocessors
eqn, grn, pic,
refer, tbl, soelim,
and to the utilities indxbib and
lookbib. This feature does not apply to any programs
different from the ones above (most notably groff
itself) since they are unique to the groff
package.
GROFF_ENCODING
The value of this environment value is passed to the
preconv preprocessor to select the encoding of input
files. Setting this option implies groff's command-line
option -k (this is, groff actually
always calls preconv). If set without a value,
groff calls preconv without arguments.
An explicit -K command-line option overrides the value
of GROFF_ENCODING
. See preconv(1) for
details.
GROFF_FONT_PATH
A list of directories in which to search for the dev
name
directory in addition to the default ones. See troff(1)
and groff_font(5) for more details.
GROFF_TMAC_PATH
A list of directories in which to search for macro files in addition to the default directories. See troff(1) and groff_tmac(5) for more details.
GROFF_TMPDIR
The directory in which temporary files are created. If this is not
set but the environment variable TMPDIR
instead, temporary
files are created in the directory TMPDIR
. On MS-DOS and
Windows platforms, the environment variables TMP
and
TEMP
(in that order) are searched also, after
GROFF_TMPDIR
and TMPDIR
. Otherwise, temporary files
are created in /tmp
. The refer(1),
groffer(1), grohtml(1), and
grops(1) commands use temporary files.
GROFF_TYPESETTER
Preset the default device. If this is not set the ps device is used as default. This device name is overwritten by the option -T.
The following example illustrates the power of the groff program as a wrapper around troff.
To process a roff
file using the preprocessors
tbl and pic and the
me macro set, classical troff
had to be called
by
pic foo.me | tbl | troff -me -Tlatin1 | grotty
Using groff, this pipe can be shortened to the equivalent command
groff -p -t -me -T latin1 foo.me
An even easier way to call this is to use grog(1) to guess the preprocessor and macro options and execute the generated command (by using backquotes to specify shell command substitution)
`grog -Tlatin1 foo.me`
The simplest way is to view the contents in an automated way by calling
groffer foo.me
On EBCDIC
hosts (e.g., OS/390 Unix
), output
devices ascii and latin1 aren't
available. Similarly, output for EBCDIC
code page
cp1047 is not available on ASCII
based
operating systems.
groff
installs files in varying locations depending on its
compile-time configuration. On this installation, the following
locations are used.
/etc/X11/app-defaults
Application defaults directory for gxditview
(1).
/usr/bin
Directory containing groff
's executable commands.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/eign
List of common words for indxbib
(1).
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4
Directory for data files.
/usr/dict/papers/Ind
Default index for lkbib
(1) and refer
(1).
/usr/share/doc/groff-base
Documentation directory.
/usr/share/doc/groff-base/examples
Example directory.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font
Font directory.
/usr/share/doc/groff-base/html
HTML documentation directory.
/usr/lib/font
Legacy font directory.
/usr/share/groff/site-font
Local font directory.
/usr/share/groff/site-tmac
Local macro package (tmac
file) directory.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac
Macro package (tmac
file) directory.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/oldfont
Font directory for compatibility with old versions of groff
;
see grops
(1).
/usr/share/doc/groff-base/pdf
PDF documentation directory.
/usr/lib/groff/site-tmac
System macro package (tmac
file) directory.
This contains all information related to macro packages. Note that
more than a single directory is searched for those files as documented
in groff_tmac(5). For the groff
installation
corresponding to this document, it is located at
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac
. The following files contained in
the groff macro directory
have a special meaning:
troffrc
Initialization file for troff
. This is interpreted by
troff before reading the macro sets and any input.
troffrc-end
Final startup file for troff
. It is parsed after all macro
sets have been read.
.tmac
tmac.
nameMacro file for macro package name
.
This contains all information related to output devices. Note that
more than a single directory is searched for those files; see
troff(1). For the groff
installation
corresponding to this document, it is located at
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font
. The following files contained in
the groff font directory
have a special meaning:
dev
name/DESC
Device description file for device name
, see
groff_font(5).
dev
name/
FFont file for font F
of device name
.
Information on how to get groff
and related information is
available at the http://www.gnu.org/software/groff">groff page
of the GNU website.
Three groff
mailing lists are available:
mailto:bug-groff@gnu.org">bug tracker activity (read-only);
mailto:groff@gnu.org">general discussion; and
mailto:groff-commit@gnu.org">commit activity (read-only), which reports changes to
groff
's source code repository by its developers.
Details on repository access and much more can be found in the file
README
at the top directory of the groff
source
package.
A free implementation of the grap preprocessor,
written by mailto:faber@lunabase.org">Ted Faber, can be
found at the http://www.lunabase.org/ ~faber/Vault/software/grap/">grap
website. This is the only grap
supported by
groff
.
groff was written by mailto:jjc@jclark.com">James Clark. This document was rewritten, enhanced, and put under the FDL license in 2002 by mailto:groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de">Bernd Warken.
Groff: The GNU Implementation of troff
, by Trent A. Fisher
and Werner Lemberg, is the primary groff
manual. You can browse
it interactively with “info groff”.
Due to its complex structure, the groff
system has many man
pages. They can be read with man(1) or
groffer(1).
But there are special sections of man pages
. groff
has man pages in sections 1,
5,and 7. When there are
several man pages
with the same name in the same man
section, the one with the lowest section is should as first. The other
man pages can be shown anyway by adding the section number as argument
before the man page name. Reading the man page about the groff
language is done by one of
man 7 groff groffer 7 groff
roff(7).
eqn(1), grn(1), pic(1), chem(1), preconv(1), refer(1), soelim(1), tbl(1), grap(1).
groff(7), groff_char(7), groff_diff(7), groff_font(5).
groff_out(7).
grodvi(1), grohtml(1), grolbp(1), grolj4(1), lj4_font(5), grops(1), gropdf(1), grotty(1).
groff_tmac(5), groff_man(7), groff_mdoc(7), groff_me(7), groff_mm(7), groff_mmse(7) (only in Swedish locales), groff_mom(7), groff_ms(7), groff_www(7), groff_trace(7), mmroff(7).
addftinfo(1), afmtodit(1), eqn2graph(1), gdiffmk(1), grap2graph(1), groffer(1), gxditview(1), hpftodit(1), indxbib(1), lkbib(1), lookbib(1), pdfroff(1), pfbtops(1), pic2graph(1), tfmtodit(1), xtotroff(1).