grops
PostScript driver for groff
see also :
afmtodit - groff - troff - pfbtops
Synopsis
grops
[-glmv]
[-b n]
[-c n]
[-F dir]
[-I dir]
[-p papersize]
[-P prologue]
[-w n] [files ...]
add an example, a script, a trick and tips
examples
no example yet ...
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description
grops
translates the output of GNU troff to PostScript.
Normally grops should be invoked by using the groff
command with a -Tps option. (Actually, this is
the default for groff.) If no files are given, grops
reads the standard input. A filename of - also
causes grops to read the standard input. PostScript
output is written to the standard output. When grops
is run by groff options can be passed to grops
using groff’s -P option.
Note that
grops doesn’t produce a valid document
structure (conforming to the Document Structuring
Convention) if called with multiple file arguments. To print
such concatenated output it is necessary to deactivate DSC
handling in the printing program or previewer. See section
FONT INSTALLATION below for a guide how to install
fonts for grops.
options
It is possible
to have whitespace between a command line option and its
parameter.
-bn
Provide workarounds for older printers, broken spoolers,
and previewers. Normally grops produces output at
PostScript LanguageLevel 2 that conforms to the
Document Structuring Conventions version 3.0. Some older
printers, spoolers, and previewers can’t handle such
output. The value of n controls what
grops does to make its output acceptable to such
programs. A value of 0 causes grops not to employ any
workarounds.
Add 1 if
no %%BeginDocumentSetup and %%EndDocumentSetup
comments should be generated; this is needed for early
versions of TranScript that get confused by anything between
the %%EndProlog comment and the first %%Page
comment.
Add 2 if
lines in included files beginning with %! should be
stripped out; this is needed for Sun’s pageview
previewer.
Add 4 if
%%Page, %%Trailer and %%EndProlog
comments should be stripped out of included files; this is
needed for spoolers that don’t understand the
%%BeginDocument and %%EndDocument
comments.
Add 8 if
the first line of the PostScript output should be
%!PS-Adobe-2.0 rather than %!PS-Adobe-3.0;
this is needed when using Sun’s Newsprint with a
printer that requires page reversal.
Add 16 if
no media size information should be included in the document
(this is, neither use %%DocumentMedia nor the
setpagedevice PostScript command). This was the
behaviour of groff version 1.18.1 and earlier; it is needed
for older printers which don’t understand PostScript
LanguageLevel 2. It is also necessary if the output is
further processed to get an encapsulated PS (EPS) file
– see below.
The default
value can be specified by a
broken n
command in the
DESC file. Otherwise the default value is 0.
-cn
Print n copies of each
page.
-Fdir
Prepend directory dir/devname to
the search path for prologue, font, and device description
files; name is the name of the device, usually
ps.
-g
Guess the page length. This generates PostScript code
that guesses the page length. The guess is correct only if
the imageable area is vertically centered on the page. This
option allows you to generate documents that can be printed
both on letter (8.5×11) paper and on A4 paper without
change.
-Idir
This option may be used to add a directory to the search
path for files on the command line and files named in
\X’ps: import’ and \X’ps:
file’ escapes. The search path is initialized with
the current directory. This option may be specified more
than once; the directories are then searched in the order
specified (but before the current directory). If you want to
make the current directory be read before other directories,
add -I. at the appropriate place.
No directory
search is performed for files with an absolute file
name.
-l
Print the document in landscape
format.
-m
Turn manual feed on for the document.
-ppaper-size
Set physical dimension of
output medium. This overrides the papersize,
paperlength, and paperwidth commands in the
DESC file; it accepts the same arguments as the
papersize command. See groff_font (5) for
details.
-Pprologue-file
Use the file
prologue-file (in the font path) as the prologue
instead of the default prologue file prologue. This
option overrides the environment variable
GROPS_PROLOGUE.
-wn
Lines should be drawn using a thickness of
n thousandths of an em. If this option is not
given, the line thickness defaults to 0.04 em.
-v
Print the version number.
ar
AvantGarde-Book
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There is also the following font which is not a member of a
family:
environment
GROPS_PROLOGUE
If this is set to foo, then grops uses the file
foo (in the font path) instead of the default prologue
file prologue. The option -P overrides this
environment variable.
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.
files
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/font/devps/DESC
Device description file.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/font/devps/F
Font description file for font F.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/font/devps/download
List of downloadable fonts.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/font/devps/text.enc
Encoding used for text fonts.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/tmac/ps.tmac
Macros for use with grops; automatically loaded by
troffrc
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/tmac/pspic.tmac
Definition of PSPIC macro, automatically loaded by
ps.tmac.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/tmac/psold.tmac
Macros to disable use of characters not present in older
PostScript printers (e.g., ’eth’ or ’thorn’).
/tmp/gropsXXXXXX
Temporary file. See groff(1) for details on the location
of temporary files.
font installation
This section gives a summary of the above explanations; it can
serve as a step-by-step font installation guide for grops.
• Convert your font to something groff understands.
This is either a PostScript Type 1 font in PFA format or a
PostScript Type 42 font, together with an AFM file.
The very first characters in a PFA file look like this:
%!PS-AdobeFont-1.0:
A PFB file has this also in the first line, but the string is
preceded with some binary bytes.
The very first characters in a Type 42 font file look like
this:
%!PS-TrueTypeFont
This is a wrapper format for TrueType fonts. Old PS printers
might not support it (this is, they don’t have a built-in
TrueType font interpreter).
If your font is in PFB format (such fonts normally have ’.pfb’ as
the file extension), you might use groff’s pfbtops(1)
program to convert it to PFA. For TrueType fonts, try
ttftot42 or fontforge. For all other font formats
use fontforge which can convert most outline font formats.
• Convert the AFM file to a groff font description
file with the afmtodit(1) program. An example call is
afmtodit Foo-Bar-Bold.afm textmap FBB
which converts the metric file ’Foo-Bar-Bold.afm’ to the groff
font ’FBB’. If you have a font family which comes with normal,
bold, italic, and bold italic faces, it is recommended to use the
letters R, B, I, and BI,
respectively, as postfixes in the groff font names to make
groff’s ’.fam’ request work. An example is groff’s built-in
Times-Roman font: The font family name is T, and the groff
font names are TR, TB, TI, and TBI.
• Install both the groff font description files and
the fonts in a ’devps’ subdirectory of the font path which groff
finds. See the ENVIRONMENT section in the troff(1)
man page which lists the actual value of the font path. Note that
groff doesn’t use the AFM files (but it is a good idea to store
them anyway).
• Register all fonts which must be downloaded to the
printer in the ’devps/download’ file. Only the first occurrence
of this file in the font path is read. This means that you should
copy the default ’download’ file to the first directory in your
font path and add your fonts there. To continue the above example
we assume that the PS font name for Foo-Bar-Bold.pfa is
’XY-Foo-Bar-Bold’ (the PS font name is stored in the
internalname field in the ’FBB’ file), thus the following
line should be added to ’download’.
XY-Foo-Bar-Bold Foo-Bar-Bold.pfa
old fonts
groff versions 1.19.2 and earlier contain a slightly different
set of the 35 Adobe core fonts; the difference is mainly the lack
of the ’Euro’ glyph and a reduced set of kerning pairs. For
backwards compatibility, these old fonts are installed also in
the
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/oldfont/devps
directory.
To use them, make sure that grops finds the fonts before
the default system fonts (with the same names): Either add
command line option -F to grops
groff -Tps -P-F -P/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/oldfont ...
or add the directory to groff’s font path environment variable
GROFF_FONT_PATH=/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/oldfont
usage
The input to grops must be in the format output by
troff(1). This is described in groff_out(5).
In addition, the device and font description files for the device
used must meet certain requirements: The resolution must be an
integer multiple of 72 times the sizescale. The
ps device uses a resolution of 72000 and a sizescale of
1000.
The device description file must contain a valid paper size; see
groff_font(5) for more information.
Each font description file must contain a command
internalname psname
which says that the PostScript name of the font is psname.
It may also contain a command
encoding enc_file
which says that the PostScript font should be reencoded using the
encoding described in enc_file; this file should consist
of a sequence of lines of the form:
pschar code
where pschar is the PostScript name of the character, and
code is its position in the encoding expressed as a
decimal integer; valid values are in the range 0 to 255.
Lines starting with # and blank lines are ignored. The
code for each character given in the font file must correspond to
the code for the character in encoding file, or to the code in
the default encoding for the font if the PostScript font is not
to be reencoded. This code can be used with the \N escape
sequence in troff to select the character, even if the
character does not have a groff name. Every character in the font
file must exist in the PostScript font, and the widths given in
the font file must match the widths used in the PostScript font.
grops assumes that a character with a groff name of
space is blank (makes no marks on the page); it can make
use of such a character to generate more efficient and compact
PostScript output.
Note that grops is able to display all glyphs in a
PostScript font, not only 256. enc_file (or the default
encoding if no encoding file specified) just defines the order of
glyphs for the first 256 characters; all other glyphs are
accessed with additional encoding vectors which grops
produces on the fly.
grops can automatically include the downloadable fonts
necessary to print the document. Such fonts must be in PFA
format. Use pfbtops(1) to convert a Type 1 font in
PFB format. Any downloadable fonts which should, when required,
be included by grops must be listed in the file
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/font/devps/download; this should
consist of lines of the form
font filename
where font is the PostScript name of the font, and
filename is the name of the file containing the font;
lines beginning with # and blank lines are ignored; fields
may be separated by tabs or spaces; filename is searched
for using the same mechanism that is used for groff font metric
files. The download file itself is also searched for using
this mechanism; currently, only the first found file in the font
path is used.
If the file containing a downloadable font or imported document
conforms to the Adobe Document Structuring Conventions, then
grops interprets any comments in the files sufficiently to
ensure that its own output is conforming. It also supplies any
needed font resources that are listed in the download file
as well as any needed file resources. It is also able to handle
inter-resource dependencies. For example, suppose that you have a
downloadable font called Garamond, and also a downloadable font
called Garamond-Outline which depends on Garamond (typically it
would be defined to copy Garamond’s font dictionary, and change
the PaintType), then it is necessary for Garamond to appear
before Garamond-Outline in the PostScript document. grops
handles this automatically provided that the downloadable font
file for Garamond-Outline indicates its dependence on Garamond by
means of the Document Structuring Conventions, for example by
beginning with the following lines
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 Resource-Font
%%DocumentNeededResources: font Garamond
%%EndComments
%%IncludeResource: font Garamond
In this case both Garamond and Garamond-Outline would need to be
listed in the download file. A downloadable font should
not include its own name in a %%DocumentSuppliedResources
comment.
grops does not interpret %%DocumentFonts comments.
The %%Document- NeededResources,
%%DocumentSuppliedResources, %%IncludeResource,
%%BeginResource, and %%EndResource comments (or
possibly the old %%DocumentNeededFonts,
%%DocumentSuppliedFonts, %%IncludeFont, %%Begin-
Font, and %%EndFont comments) should be used.
In the default setup there are styles called R, I,
B, and BI mounted at font positions 1 to 4.
The fonts are grouped into families A, BM,
C, H, HN, N, P,
and T having members in each of these styles:
zcmi
ZapfChancery-MediumItalic
There are also some special fonts called S for the PS
Symbol font, and SS, containing slanted lowercase Greek
letters taken from PS Symbol. Zapf Dingbats is available as
ZD, and a reversed version of ZapfDingbats (with symbols
pointing in the opposite direction) is available as ZDR;
most characters in these fonts are unnamed and must be accessed
using \N.
The default color for \m and \M is black; for
colors defined in the ’rgb’ color space setrgbcolor is
used, for ’cmy’ and ’cmyk’ setcmykcolor, and for ’gray’
setgray. Note that setcmykcolor is a PostScript
LanguageLevel 2 command and thus not available on some older
printers.
grops understands various X commands produced using
the \X escape sequence; grops only interprets
commands that begin with a ps: tag.
\X’ps: exec code’
This executes the arbitrary PostScript commands in code.
The PostScript currentpoint is set to the position of the
\X command before executing code. The origin is at
the top left corner of the page, and y coordinates increase
down the page. A procedure u is defined that converts
groff units to the coordinate system in effect (provided the user
doesn’t change the scale). For example,
.nr x 1i
\X’ps: exec \nx u 0 rlineto stroke’
draws a horizontal line one inch long. code may make
changes to the graphics state, but any changes persist only to
the end of the page. A dictionary containing the definitions
specified by the def and mdef is on top of the
dictionary stack. If your code adds definitions to this
dictionary, you should allocate space for them using
\X’ps mdef n’. Any definitions
persist only until the end of the page. If you use the \Y
escape sequence with an argument that names a macro, code
can extend over multiple lines. For example,
.nr x 1i
.de y
ps: exec
\nx u 0 rlineto
stroke
..
\Yy
is another way to draw a horizontal line one inch long. Note the
single backslash before ’nx’ – the only reason to use a number
register while defining the macro ’y’ is to convert a
user-specified dimension ’1i’ to internal groff units which are
in turn converted to PS units with the u procedure.
grops wraps user-specified PostScript code into a
dictionary, nothing more. In particular, it doesn’t start and end
the inserted code with save and restore,
respectively. This must be supplied by the user, if necessary.
\X’ps: file name’
This is the same as the exec command except that the
PostScript code is read from file name.
\X’ps: def code’
Place a PostScript definition contained in code in the
prologue. There should be at most one definition per \X
command. Long definitions can be split over several \X
commands; all the code arguments are simply joined
together separated by newlines. The definitions are placed in a
dictionary which is automatically pushed on the dictionary stack
when an exec command is executed. If you use the \Y
escape sequence with an argument that names a macro, code
can extend over multiple lines.
\X’ps: mdef n code’
Like def, except that code may contain up to
n definitions. grops needs to know how many
definitions code contains so that it can create an
appropriately sized PostScript dictionary to contain them.
\X’ps: import file llx lly urx ury width [ height ]’
Import a PostScript graphic from file. The arguments
llx, lly, urx, and ury give the
bounding box of the graphic in the default PostScript coordinate
system; they should all be integers; llx and lly
are the x and y coordinates of the lower left corner of the
graphic; urx and ury are the x and
y coordinates of the upper right corner of the graphic;
width and height are integers that give the desired
width and height in groff units of the graphic.
The graphic is scaled so that it has this width and height and
translated so that the lower left corner of the graphic is
located at the position associated with \X command. If the
height argument is omitted it is scaled uniformly in the x and
y directions so that it has the specified width.
Note that the contents of the \X command are not
interpreted by troff; so vertical space for the graphic is
not automatically added, and the width and height
arguments are not allowed to have attached scaling indicators.
If the PostScript file complies with the Adobe Document
Structuring Conventions and contains a %%BoundingBox
comment, then the bounding box can be automatically extracted
from within groff by using the psbb request.
See groff_tmac(5) for a description of the PSPIC
macro which provides a convenient high-level interface for
inclusion of PostScript graphics.
\X’ps: invis’
\X’ps: endinvis’
No output is generated for text and drawing commands that are
bracketed with these \X commands. These commands are
intended for use when output from troff is previewed
before being processed with grops; if the previewer is
unable to display certain characters or other constructs, then
other substitute characters or constructs can be used for
previewing by bracketing them with these \X commands.
For example, gxditview is not able to display a proper
\(em character because the standard X11 fonts do not
provide it; this problem can be overcome by executing the
following request
.char \(em \X’ps: invis’\
\Z’\v’-.25m’\h’.05m’\D’l .9m 0’\h’.05m’’\
\X’ps: endinvis’\(em
In this case, gxditview is unable to display the
\(em character and draws the line, whereas grops
prints the \(em character and ignores the line (this code
is already in file Xps.tmac which is loaded if a document
intended for grops is previewed with gxditview).
If a PostScript procedure BPhook has been defined via a
’ps: def’ or ’ps: mdef’ device command,
it is executed at the beginning of every page (before anything is
drawn or written by groff). For example, to underlay the page
contents with the word ’DRAFT’ in light gray, you might use
.de XX
ps: def
/BPhook
{ gsave .9 setgray clippath pathbbox exch 2 copy
.5 mul exch .5 mul translate atan rotate pop pop
/NewCenturySchlbk-Roman findfont 200 scalefont setfont
(DRAFT) dup stringwidth pop -.5 mul -70 moveto show
grestore }
def
..
.devicem XX
Or, to cause lines and polygons to be drawn with square linecaps
and mitered linejoins instead of the round linecaps and linejoins
normally used by grops, use
.de XX
ps: def
/BPhook { 2 setlinecap 0 setlinejoin } def
..
.devicem XX
(square linecaps, as opposed to butt linecaps (0 setlinecap),
give true corners in boxed tables even though the lines are drawn
unconnected).
Encapsulated PostScript
grops itself doesn’t emit bounding box information. With the
help of Ghostscript the following simple script,
groff2eps, produces an encapsulated PS file.
#! /bin/sh
groff -P-b16 $1 >$1.ps
gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=bbox -- $1.ps 2>$1.bbox
cat $1.ps \
| sed -e "/^%%Orientation/r$1.bbox" \
-e "/^%!PS-Adobe-3.0/s/$/ EPSF-3.0/" >$1.eps
rm $1.ps $1.bbox
Just say
groff2eps foo
to convert file foo to foo.eps.
TrueType and other font formats
TrueType fonts can be used with grops if converted first
to Type 42 format, a special PostScript wrapper
equivalent to the PFA format mentioned in pfbtops(1).
There are several different methods to generate a type42 wrapper
and most of them involve the use of a PostScript interpreter such
as Ghostscript – see gs(1).
Yet, the easiest method involves the use of the application
ttftot42(1). This program uses freetype(3) (version
1.3.1) to generate type42 font wrappers and well-formed AFM files
that can be fed to the afmtodit(1) script to create
appropriate metric files. The resulting font wrappers should be
added to the download file. ttftot42 source code
can be downloaded from ftp://www.giga.or.at/pub/nih/ttftot42/
(ftp://www.giga.or.at/pub/nih/ttftot42/).
Another solution for creating type42 wrappers is to use
FontForge, available from http://fontforge.sf.net
(http://fontforge.sf.net). This font editor can convert most
outline font formats.
see also
afmtodit ,
groff , troff , pfbtops ,
groff_out, groff_font,
groff_char, groff_tmac
PostScript
Language Document Structuring Conventions Specifica-
tion (http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/ps/5001.DSC_Spec.pdf)