groff
(1)
Name
groff - end for the groff document formatting system
Synopsis
groff [-abcegilpstzCEGNRSUVXZ] [-d cs] [-f fam] [-F dir]
[-I dir] [-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 ...]
The command line is parsed according to the usual GNU con-
vention. 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 charac-
ter) denotes the standard input.
Description
User Commands GROFF(1)
NAME
groff - front-end for the groff document formatting system
SYNOPSIS
groff [-abcegilpstzCEGNRSUVXZ] [-d cs] [-f fam] [-F dir]
[-I dir] [-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 ...]
The command line is parsed according to the usual GNU con-
vention. 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 charac-
ter) denotes the standard input.
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
As groff is a wrapper program for gtroff both programs share
a set of options. But the groff program has some addi-
tional, native options and gives a new meaning to some
gtroff options. On the other hand, not all gtroff options
can be fed into groff.
Native groff Options
The following options either do not exist for gtroff or are
differently interpreted by groff.
-e Preprocess with geqn.
-g Preprocess with ggrn.
-G Preprocess with grap.
-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
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User Commands GROFF(1)
those named in .psbb and .so requests, and \X'ps:
import' and \X'ps: file' escapes). The current direc-
tory is always searched first. This option may be
specified more than once; the directories will be
searched in the order specified. No directory search
is performed for files specified using an absolute
path. This option implies the -s option.
-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 geqn.
-p Preprocess with gpic.
-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 postproces-
sor. For example, to pass a title to the gxditview
postprocessor, the shell command
sh# groff -X -P -title -P 'groff it' foo
is equivalent to
sh# groff -X -Z foo | gxditview -title 'groff it' -
-R Preprocess with grefer. No mechanism is provided for
passing arguments to grefer because most grefer options
have equivalent language elements that can be specified
within the document. See grefer(1) for more details.
-s Preprocess with gsoelim.
-S Safer mode. Pass the -S option to gpic and disable the
following gtroff requests: .open, .opena, .pso, .sy,
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User Commands GROFF(1)
and .pi. For security reasons, safer mode is enabled
by default.
-t Preprocess with gtbl.
-T dev
Set output device to dev. For this device, gtroff gen-
erates the intermediate output; see groff_out(5). Then
groff calls a postprocessor to convert gtroff's inter-
mediate output to its final format. Real devices in
groff are
dvi TeX DVI format (postprocessor is grodvi).
html HTML output (preprocessors are gsoelim 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 com-
patible) printers (postprocessor is grolj4).
ps PostScript output (postprocessor is grops).
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 `post-
processor' (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.
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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 ex-
ecute it. If given more than once, the commands will
be 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 -print-
Command 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 resolu-
tion for previewing -Tps output is 75dpi; this can be
changed by passing the -resolution option to gxditview,
for example
sh# groff -X -P-resolution -P100 -man foo.1
-z Suppress output generated by gtroff. Only error mes-
sages will be printed.
-Z Print the groff intermediate output to standard output;
see groff_out(5). Normally groff calls automatically a
postprocessor. With this option, the output of gtroff
for the device, the so-called intermediate output is
issued without postprocessing.
Transparent Options
The following options are transparently handed over to the
formatter program gtroff that is called by groff subsequent-
ly. These options are described in more detail in
gtroff(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.
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-C enable compatibility mode.
-d cs
-d name=s
define string.
-E disable gtroff 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 cn
-r name=n
set number register.
-w name
enable warning name.
-W name
disable warning 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 con-
stitute 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.
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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 gtroff(1) program.
It allows to specify the preprocessors by command line op-
tions and automatically runs the postprocessor that is ap-
propriate for the selected device. Doing so, the sometimes
tedious piping mechanism of classical roff(7) can be avoid-
ed.
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 classi-
cal preprocessors with moderate extensions. The preproces-
sors distributed with the groff package are
geqn(1)
for mathematical formulae,
ggrn(1)
for including gremlin(1) pictures,
gpic(1)
for drawing diagrams,
grefer(1)
for bibliographic references,
gsoelim(1)
for including macro files from standard locations,
and
gtbl(1)
for tables.
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Besides these, there are some internal preprocessors that
are automatically run with some devices. These aren't visi-
ble to the user.
Macro Packages
Macro packages can be included by option -m. The groff sys-
tem 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 docu-
ments; 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 in-
complete) groff info file; a short (but complete) reference
can be found in groff(7).
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Formatters
The central roff formatter within the groff system is
gtroff(1). It provides the features of both the classical
troff and nroff, as well as the groff extensions. The com-
mand line option -C switches gtroff into compatibility mode
which tries to emulate classical roff as much as possible.
There is a shell script gnroff(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) charac-
ter 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).
utf8 Text output using the Unicode (ISO 10646) character set
with UTF-8 encoding; see unicode(7).
X75 75dpi X Window System output suitable for the preview-
ers 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 preview-
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ers 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 inter-
faces, usually accepting PostScript. Consequently, there
isn't an urgent need for more hardware device postproces-
sors.
The groff software devices for conversion into other docu-
ment file formats are
grodvi(1)
for the DVI format,
grohtml(1)
for HTML format,
grops(1)
for PostScript.
Combined with the many existing free conversion tools this
should be sufficient to convert a troff document into virtu-
ally 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)
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User Commands GROFF(1)
Create font description files for PostScript device.
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.
pfbtops(1)
Translate a PostScript font in .pfb format to ASCII.
tfmtodit(1)
Create font description files for TeX DVI device.
xditview(1x)
roff viewer distributed with X window.
ENVIRONMENT
Normally, the path separator in the following environment
variables is the colon; this may vary depending on the oper-
ating system. For example, DOS and Windows use a semicolon
instead.
GROFF_BIN_PATH
This search path, followed by $PATH, will be used for
commands that are executed by groff. If it is not set
then the directory where the groff binaries were in-
stalled is prepended to PATH.
GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX
When there is a need to run different roff implementa-
tions 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
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User Commands GROFF(1)
wrapper program will internally call xxxtroff instead
of troff. This also applies to the preprocessors eqn,
grn, pic, refer, tbl, soelim, and to the utilities
gindxbib and glookbib. This feature does not apply to
any programs different from the ones above (most no-
tably groff itself) since they are unique to the groff
package.
GROFF_FONT_PATH
A list of directories in which to search for the dev-
name directory in addition to the default ones. See
gtroff(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
gtroff(1) and groff_tmac(5) for more details.
GROFF_TMPDIR
The directory in which temporary files will be created.
If this is not set but the environment variable TMPDIR
instead, temporary files will be created in the direc-
tory $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. Other-
wise, temporary files will be created in /tmp. The
grefer(1), groffer(1), grohtml(1), and grops(1) com-
mands 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 over-
written 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 abso-
lutely fixed, but their function is clearly defined and co-
incides 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 instal-
lation corresponding to this document, it is located at
/usr/share/groff/1.19.2/tmac. The following files contained
in the groff macro directory have a special meaning:
troffrc
Initialization file for troff. This is interpreted by
gtroff before reading the macro sets and any input.
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User Commands GROFF(1)
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 gtroff(1). For the groff installation corre-
sponding to this document, it is located at
/usr/share/groff/1.19.2/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.
EXAMPLES
The following example illustrates the power of the groff
program as a wrapper around gtroff.
To process a roff file using the preprocessors tbl and pic
and the me macro set, classical troff had to be called by
sh# pic foo.me | tbl | troff -me -Tlatin1 | grotty
Using groff, this pipe can be shortened to the equivalent
command
sh# 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 sub-
stitution)
sh# `grog -Tlatin1 foo.me`
The simplest way is to view the contents in an automated way
by calling
sh# groffer foo.me
BUGS
On EBCDIC hosts (e.g. OS/390 Unix), output devices ascii and
latin1 aren't available. Similarly, output for EBCDIC code
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User Commands GROFF(1)
page cp1047 is not available on ASCII based operating sys-
tems.
Report bugs to bug-groff@gnu.org. Include a complete, self-
contained example that will allow the bug to be reproduced,
and say which version of groff you are using.
AVAILABILITY
Information on how to get groff and related information is
available at the GNU website <http://www.gnu.org/software/
groff>. The most recent released version of groff is avail-
able for anonymous ftp at the groff development site <ftp://
ftp.ffii.org/pub/groff/devel/groff-current.tar.gz>.
Three groff mailing lists are available:
bug-groff@gnu.org
for reporting bugs,
groff@gnu.org
for general discussion of groff,
groff-commit@ffii.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 <faber@lunabase.org>. The actual ver-
sion can be found at the grap website <http://
www.lunabase.org/~faber/Vault/software/grap/>. This is the
only grap version supported by groff.
AUTHORS
Copyright (C) 1989, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.
This document is distributed under the terms of the FDL (GNU
Free Documentation License) version 1.1 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 writ-
ten by James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>. It was rewritten, en-
hanced, and put under the FDL license by Bernd Warken. It
is maintained by Werner Lemberg <wl@gnu.org>.
groff is a GNU free software project. All parts of the
groff package are protected by GNU copyleft licenses. The
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User Commands GROFF(1)
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).
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following at-
tributes:
+---------------+-----------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+-----------------------+
|Availability | text/groff/groff-core |
+---------------+-----------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+-----------------------+
SEE ALSO
The groff info file contains all information on the groff
system within a single document. Beneath the detailed docu-
mentation of all aspects, it provides examples and back-
ground information. See info(1) on how to read it.
Due to its complex structure, the groff system has many man
pages. They can be read with man(1) or groffer(1).
Introduction, history and further readings:
roff(7).
Viewer for groff files:
groffer(1), gxditview(1), xditview(1x).
Wrapper programs for formatters:
groff(1), grog(1).
Roff preprocessors:
geqn(1), ggrn(1), gpic(1), grefer(1), gsoelim(1),
gtbl(1), grap(1).
Roff language with the groff extensions:
groff(7), groff_char(7), groff_diff(7), groff_font(5).
Roff formatter programs:
gnroff(1), gtroff(1), ditroff(7).
The intermediate output language: groff_out(7).
Postprocessors for the output devices:
grodvi(1), grohtml(1), grolbp(1), grolj4(1),
lj4_font(5), grops(1), grotty(1).
Groff macro packages and macro-specific utilities:
groff_tmac(5), groff_man(7), groff_mdoc(7),
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User Commands GROFF(1)
groff_me(7), groff_mm(7), groff_mmse(7), groff_mom(7),
groff_ms(7), groff_www(7), groff_trace(7), mmroff(7).
The following utilities are available:
addftinfo(1), afmtodit(1), eqn2graph(1), grap2graph(1),
groffer(1), gxditview(1), hpftodit(1), gindxbib(1),
glookbib(1), pfbtops(1), pic2graph(1), tfmtodit(1).
NOTES
This software was built from source available at https://ja-
va.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original community
source was downloaded from
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/groff-1.19.2.tar.gz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/groff/.
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