groff_filenames - filename extensions for roff and groff
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Miscellaneous Information Manual GROFF_FILENAMES(7) NAME groff_filenames -- filename extensions for roff and groff DESCRIPTION Since the evolution of roff in the 1970s, a whole bunch of filename extensions for roff files were used. The roff extensions refer to preprocessors or macro packages. These extensions are fixed in all Unix-like operating systems. Later on, groff added some more extensions. We will now write a man-page about these filename extensions. COMPRESSION OF ROFF FILES Each roff file can be optionally compressed. That means that the total filename ends with a compressor name. So the whole filename has the structure <name>.<extension>[.<compression>]. Mostly known are the compressor extensions .Z, .gz, and .bzip2. Rela- tively new is .xz. From now on, we will ignore the compressions and only comment the structure <name>.<extension>. MAN-PAGES The Unix manual pages are shortly named man-pages. The man-page style is the best known part of the roff language. The extensions for man should be better documented. So this is docu- mented here. Files written in the man language use the following extension: *.<sec- tion>[<group>]. Man-page Sections The traditional man-page <section> is a digit from 1 to 8. <name>.1 <name>.2 <name>.3 <name>.4 <name>.5 <name>.6 <name>.7 <name>.8 Classic man-page sections. Linux added the section number 9 for kernel man-pages. <name>.9 Linux kernel man-pages In older commercial Unix systems, the 3 characters l, n, and o were also used as section names. This is today deprecated, but there are still documents in this format. <name>.l <name>.n <name>.o Deprecated old man-page sections. Man-page Group Extensions The <group> extension in .<section>[<group>] is optional, but it can be any string of word characters. Usually programmers use a group name that is already used, e.g. x for X Window System documents or tk to refer to the tk programming language. Examples: groff.1 is the man-page for groff in section 1 without a group xargs.1posix.gz is the man-page for the program xargs in section 1 and group posix; moreover it is compressed with gz (gzip). config.5ssl OpenSSL CONF library configuration files from section 5 with group ssl. dpkg-reconfigure.8cdebconf man-page for the program dpkg-reconfigure in section 8 and group cdebconf. Source of Man-pages There are 2 roff languages for writing man-pages: man and mdoc. The names of these 2 styles are taken as extensions for the source code files of man-pages in the groff package. <name>.man traditional Unix-like man-page format within groff source files. <name>.n A temporary man-page file produced from a name.man man-page by a run of make within the groff source package. <name>.mdoc Man-page format in BSD. <name>.1b Man-page format in heirloom roff . <name>.mandoc Files using this extension recognize both man-page formats in groff and other processors. TRADITIONAL TROFF EXTENSIONS Files Using Macro Packages The classical roff languages were interpreted by the traditional troff and nroff programs. There were several roff languages, each represented by a macro-package. Each of these provided a suitable file name extension: <name>.me roff file using the me macro package. <name>.mm roff file using the mm macro package <name>.ms roff file using the ms macro package All of these classical roff languages and their extensions are still very active in groff. Source Code for Macro Packages (TMAC Files) In traditional roff the source code for the macro packages was stored in TMAC files. Their file names have the form: tmac.<package>, <package> is the name of the macro package without the leading m character, which is reintegrated by the option -m. For example, tmac.an is the source for the man macro package. In the groff source, more suitable file names were integrated, see later on. Preprocessors Moreover, the following preprocessors were used as filename extension: <name>.chem for the integration of chemical formulas <name>.eqn for the mathematical use of equations <name>.pic graphical tool <name>.tbl for tables with tbl <name>.ref for files using the prefer preprocessor Classical Roff Files <name>.t <name>.tr for files using the roff language of any kind NEW GROFF EXTENSIONS GNU roff groff is the actual roff standard, both for classical roff and new extensions. So even the used new extensions in the source code should be regarded as actual standard. The following extensions are used instead of classical .t or .tr: <name>.groff <name>.roff general ending for files using the groff language Source Code for Macro Packages (TMAC Files) As the classical form tmac.<package_without_m>, of the TMAC file names is quite strange, groff added the following structures: <package_without_m>.tmac m<package>.tmac groff_m<package>.tmac Files Using new Macro Packages Groff uses the following new macro packages: <name>.mmse file with swedish mm macros for groff <name>.mom files written in the groff macro package mom <name>.www files written in HTML-like groff macros. Preprocessors and Postprocessors <name>.hdtbl a new tbl format. See groff_hdtbl(7). <name>.grap files written for the graphical grap processor. <name>.grn for including gremlin(1), pictures, see grn(1). <name>.pdfroff transform this file with pdfroff of the groff system ATTRIBUTES See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes: +---------------+------------------+ |ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +---------------+------------------+ |Availability | text/groff | +---------------+------------------+ |Stability | Uncommitted | +---------------+------------------+ SEE ALSO History and future roff(7), man-pages(7), groff_diff(7), groff(7) Compression uncompress(1posix), gzip2(1), bzip2(1), xz(1) A man-page of the naming form name(n) can be read in text mode by man n name or in graphical mode (PDF) by groffer n name Gunnar Ritter's Heirloom roff project <https://github.com/n-t-roff/ heirloom-doctools>. You can get this package with the shell command: $ git clone https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools COPYING Copyright (C) 2013-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This file is part of groff, a free software project. You can redis- tribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPL2) as published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license text can be found in the internet at <http://www.gnu.org/licenses>. AUTHORS This file was written by Bernd Warken <groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de>. NOTES Source code for open source software components in Oracle Solaris can be found at https://www.oracle.com/downloads/opensource/solaris-source- code-downloads.html. This software was built from source available at https://github.com/oracle/solaris-userland. The original community source was downloaded from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/groff-1.22.3.tar.gz. Further information about this software can be found on the open source community website at https://www.gnu.org/software/groff. Groff Version 1.22.3 4 November 2014 GROFF_FILENAMES(7)