groff
front-end for the groff document formatting system
see also :
info - man - groffer - gxditview - xditview - grog - eqn - grn - pic - chem - preconv - refer - soelim - tbl - nroff - troff - grodvi - grolbp - grolj4 - grops - gropdf - grotty - mmroff - addftinfo - afmtodit - eqn2graph - gdiffmk - grap2graph - hpftodit - indxbib - lkbib - lookbib - pdfroff - pfbtops - pic2graph - tfmtodit - xtotroff
Synopsis
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 | --help
groff
-v | --version
[option ...]
add an example, a script, a trick and tips
examples
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
source
groff -Tascii -man sample.man | less
description
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 GNU (http://www.gnu.org). The
groff system has all features of the classical
roff, but adds many extensions.
The
groff program allows to control the whole
groff system by command line options. This is a great
simplification in comparison to the classical case (which
uses pipes only).
options
The command
line is parsed according to the usual GNU convention. The
whitespace between a command line option and its argument is
optional. 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.
Native groff
Options
The following options either do not exist for troff
or are differently interpreted by groff.
-D arg
Set default input encoding used by preconv to
arg. Implies -k.
-e
Preprocess with eqn.
-g
Preprocess with grn.
-G
Preprocess with grap. Implies
-p.
-h
--help
Print a help message.
-I 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’ and \X’ps: file’
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.
-j
Preprocess with chem. Implies
-p.
-k
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.
-K arg
Set input encoding used by preconv to arg.
Implies -k.
-l
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.
-L 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.
-N
Don’t allow newlines within eqn delimiters.
This is the same as the -N option in
eqn.
-p
Preprocess with pic.
-P -option
-P -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’ -
-R
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.
-s
Preprocess with soelim.
-S
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.
-t
Preprocess with tbl.
-T 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
xhtml
HTML 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).
pdf
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.
The following
arguments select gxditview as the
’postprocessor’ (it is rather a viewing
program):
X75
75dpi resolution, 10pt document
base font.
X75-12
75dpi resolution, 12pt document base font.
X100
100dpi resolution, 10pt document base font.
X100-12
100dpi resolution, 12pt
document base font.
The default
device is ps.
-U
Unsafe mode. Reverts to the (old) unsafe behaviour; see
option -S.
-v
--version
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.
-V
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.
-X
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 75dpi; this can be
changed by passing the -resolution option to
gxditview, for example
groff -X -P-resolution -P100 -man foo.1
-z
Suppress output generated by
troff. Only error messages are printed.
-Z
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).
Transparent
Options
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).
-a
ASCII approximation of
output.
-b
Backtrace on error or warning.
-c
Disable color output. Please consult the
grotty(1) man page for more details.
-C
Enable compatibility mode.
-d cs
-d name=s
Define string.
-E
Disable troff error messages.
-f fam
Set default font family.
-F dir
Set path for font DESC files.
-i
Process standard input after the specified input
files.
-m name
Include macro file
name.tmac (or tmac.name); see
also groff_tmac(5).
-M dir
Path for macro files.
-n num
Number the first page num.
-o list
Output only pages in
list.
-r name=n
Set number register.
-w name
Enable warning name. See
troff(1) for names.
-W name
disable warning name.
See troff(1) for names.
availability
Information on how to get groff and related information is
available at the groff GNU website
(http://www.gnu.org/software/groff). The most recent released
version of groff is available at the groff development
site (http://groff.ffii.org/groff/devel/groff-current.tar.gz).
Three groff mailing lists are available:
for reporting bugs (mailto:bug-groff[:at:]gnu[:dot:]org).
for general discussion
of groff,.
the groff commit list (mailto:groff-commit[:at:]ffii[:dot:]org),
a read-only list showing logs of commitments to the CVS
repository.
Details on CVS access and much more can be found in the file
README at the top directory of the groff source
package.
There is a free implementation of the grap preprocessor,
written by Ted Faber (mailto:faber[:at:]lunabase[:dot:]org). The
actual version can be found at the grap website
(http://www.lunabase.org/~faber/Vault/software/grap/). This is
the only grap version supported by groff.
environment
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 xxxtroff 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
devname 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 32 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.
files
There are some directories in which groff installs all of
its data files. Due to different installation habits on different
operating systems, their locations are not absolutely fixed, but
their function is clearly defined and coincides on all systems.
groff Macro 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/1.22.1/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.
name.tmac
tmac.name
Macro file for macro package name.
groff Font Directory
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/1.22.1/font. The following files
contained in the groff font directory have a special
meaning:
devname/DESC
Device description file for device name, see
groff_font(5).
devname/F
Font file for font F of device name.
using groff
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.
Paper Size
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 ...
Front-ends
The groff program is a wrapper around the troff(1)
program. It allows 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 allround-viewer for
groff files and man pages.
Preprocessors
The groff preprocessors are reimplementations of the
classical preprocessors with moderate extensions. The standard
preprocessors distributed with the groff package are
eqn(1)
for mathematical formulæ,
grn(1)
for including gremlin(1) pictures,
pic(1)
for drawing diagrams,
chem(1)
for chemical structure diagrams,
refer(1)
for bibliographic references,
soelim(1)
for including macro files from standard locations,
and
tbl(1)
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
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:
man
The traditional man page format; see groff_man(7). It can
be specified on the command line as -man or
-m man.
mandoc
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.
mdoc
The BSD-style man page format; see groff_mdoc(7). It can
be specified on the command line as -mdoc or
-m mdoc.
me
The classical me document format; see groff_me(7).
It can be specified on the command line as -me or
-m me.
mm
The classical mm document format; see groff_mm(7).
It can be specified on the command line as -mm or
-m mm.
ms
The classical ms document format; see groff_ms(7).
It can be specified on the command line as -ms or
-m ms.
www
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.
Programming Language
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).
The groff language as a whole is described in the (still
incomplete) groff info file; a short (but complete)
reference can be found in groff(7).
Formatters
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).
Devices
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.
ascii
Text output using the ascii(7) character set.
cp1047
Text output using the EBCDIC code page IBM cp1047 (e.g., OS/390
Unix).
dvi
TeX DVI format.
html
HTML output.
latin1
Text output using the ISO Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1) character set; see
iso_8859_1(7).
lbp
Output for Canon CAPSL printers (LBP-4 and LBP-8 series laser
printers).
lj4
HP LaserJet4-compatible (or other PCL5-compatible) printers.
ps
PostScript output; suitable for printers and previewers like
gv(1).
pdf
PDF files; suitable for viewing with tools such as
evince(1) and okular(1).
utf8
Text output using the Unicode (ISO 10646) character set with
UTF-8 encoding; see unicode(7).
xhtml
XHTML output.
X75
75dpi X Window System output suitable for the previewers
xditview(1x) and gxditview(1). A variant for a 12pt
document base font is X75-12.
X100
100dpi X Window System output suitable for the previewers
xditview(1x) and gxditview(1). A variant for a 12pt
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.
Postprocessors
groff provides 3 hardware postprocessors:
grolbp(1)
for some Canon printers,
grolj4(1)
for printers compatible to the HP LaserJet 4 and PCL5,
grotty(1)
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
grodvi(1)
for the DVI format,
grohtml(1)
for HTML and XHTML formats,
grops(1)
for PostScript.
gropdf(1)
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.
Utilities
The following utility programs around groff are available.
addftinfo(1)
Add information to troff font description files for use
with groff.
afmtodit(1)
Create font description files for PostScript device.
eqn2graph(1)
Convert an eqn image into a cropped image.
gdiffmk(1)
Mark differences between groff, nroff, or
troff files.
grap2graph(1)
Convert a grap diagram into a cropped bitmap image.
groffer(1)
General viewer program for groff files and man pages.
gxditview(1)
The groff X viewer, the GNU version of xditview.
hpftodit(1)
Create font description files for lj4 device.
indxbib(1)
Make inverted index for bibliographic databases.
lkbib(1)
Search bibliographic databases.
lookbib(1)
Interactively search bibliographic databases.
pdfroff(1)
Create PDF documents using groff.
pfbtops(1)
Translate a PostScript font in .pfb format to ASCII.
pic2graph(1)
Convert a pic diagram into a cropped image.
tfmtodit(1)
Create font description files for TeX DVI device.
xditview(1x)
roff viewer distributed with X window.
xtotroff(1)
Convert X font metrics into GNU troff font metrics.
bugs
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.
Report bugs to
the groff maling
list (mailto:bug-groff[:at:]gnu[:dot:]org). Include a complete, self-contained example that
allows the bug to be reproduced, and say which version of
groff you are using.
see also
The groff
info file contains all information on the groff
system within a single document, providing man y examples and
background information. See info on how to read
it.
Due to its
complex structure, the groff system has many man
pages. They can be read with man or
groffer .
Introduction, history and further readings:
roff.
Viewer for groff files:
groffer,
gxditview , xditview (1x).
Wrapper programs for
formatters:
groff,
grog .
Roff preprocessors:
eqn , grn ,
pic , chem , preconv ,
refer , soelim , tbl ,
grap.
Roff language with the groff
extensions:
groff,
groff_char, groff_diff,
groff_font.
Roff formatter programs:
nroff ,
troff , ditroff.
The intermediate output
language:
groff_out.
Postprocessors for the output
devices:
grodvi ,
grohtml, grolbp , grolj4 ,
lj4_font, grops , gropdf ,
grotty .
Groff macro packages and
macro-specific utilities:
groff_tmac,
groff_man, groff_mdoc,
groff_me, groff_mm,
groff_mmse, groff_mom,
groff_ms, groff_www,
groff_trace, mmroff .
The following utilities are
available:
addftinfo ,
afmtodit , eqn2graph , gdiffmk ,
grap2graph , groffer,
gxditview, hpftodit , indxbib ,
lkbib , lookbib , pdfroff ,
pfbtops , pic2graph , tfmtodit ,
xtotroff .
authors
Copyright
© 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This document
is distributed under the terms of the FDL (GNU Free
Documentation License) version 1.3 or later. You should have
received a copy of the FDL on your system, it is also
available on-line at the
GNU copyleft
site (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html).
This document
is based on the original groff man page written by
James Clark (jjc[:at:]jclark[:dot:]com). It was rewritten,
enhanced, and put under the FDL license by Bernd Warken. It
is maintained by Werner
Lemberg (mailto:wl[:at:]gnu[:dot:]org).
groff is
a GNU free software project. All parts of the groff
package are protected by GNU copyleft licenses. The
software files are distributed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License (GPL), while the documentation files
mostly use the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL).