GROFF(1) General Commands Manual GROFF(1)
NAME
groff - front-end for the groff document formatting system
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 ...]
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 simplifi‐
cation 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 file‐
name 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 abso‐
lute 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 speci‐
fied 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.
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.
-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 cn
-r name=n
complements roff(7) with groff-specific features. This section can be regarded as a guide to the documenta‐
tion 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
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 classi‐
cal troff and nroff, as well as the groff extensions. The command line option -C switches troff into compati‐
bility 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).
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.
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.
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.
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/1.22.2/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/1.22.2/font. The following files contained in the groff font directory have a special mean‐
ing:
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 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`
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 ⟨[email protected]⟩.
for general discussion of groff, ⟨[email protected]⟩.
the groff commit list ⟨[email protected]⟩, 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 ⟨[email protected]⟩. 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.
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 ⟨[email protected]⟩. It was rewrit‐
ten, enhanced, and put under the FDL license by Bernd Warken <[email protected]>. It is maintained
by Werner Lemberg ⟨[email protected]⟩.
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 documen‐
tation files mostly use the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL).
SEE ALSO
The groff info file contains all information on the groff system within a single document, providing many
examples and background 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:
eqn(1), grn(1), pic(1), chem(1), preconv(1), refer(1), soelim(1), tbl(1), grap(1).
Groff macro packages and macro-specific utilities:
groff_tmac(5), groff_man(7), groff_mdoc(7), 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), 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).
Groff Version 1.22.2 7 February 2013 GROFF(1)
Back to main site | Back to man page index