GROPS(1) General Commands Manual GROPS(1)
NAME
grops - PostScript driver for groff
SYNOPSIS
grops [-glmv] [-b n] [-c n] [-F dir] [-I dir] [-p papersize] [-P prologue] [-w n] [files ...]
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 writ‐
ten 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 out‐
put 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.
-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 pro‐
logue. 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.
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.
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 Gara‐
mond 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 %%DocumentNeededResources, %%DocumentSupplied‐
Resources, %%IncludeResource, %%BeginResource, and %%EndResource comments (or possibly the old %%Document‐
NeededFonts, %%DocumentSuppliedFonts, %%IncludeFont, %%BeginFont, 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:
AR AvantGarde-Book
AI AvantGarde-BookOblique
AB AvantGarde-Demi
ABI AvantGarde-DemiOblique
BMR Bookman-Light
BMI Bookman-LightItalic
BMB Bookman-Demi
BMBI Bookman-DemiItalic
CR Courier
CI Courier-Oblique
CB Courier-Bold
CBI Courier-BoldOblique
HR Helvetica
HI Helvetica-Oblique
HB Helvetica-Bold
HBI Helvetica-BoldOblique
HNR Helvetica-Narrow
HNI Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique
HNB Helvetica-Narrow-Bold
HNBI Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique
NR NewCenturySchlbk-Roman
NI NewCenturySchlbk-Italic
NB NewCenturySchlbk-Bold
NBI NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic
PR Palatino-Roman
PI Palatino-Italic
PB Palatino-Bold
PBI Palatino-BoldItalic
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 dimen‐
sion `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 defini‐
tion 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.
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 char‐
acters 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
-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) (ver‐
sion 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.
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
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/1.22.2/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/1.22.2/oldfont ...
or add the directory to groff's font path environment variable
GROFF_FONT_PATH=/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/oldfont
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/1.22.2/font/devps/DESC Device description file.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/font/devps/F Font description file for font F.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/font/devps/download List of downloadable fonts.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/font/devps/text.enc Encoding used for text fonts.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/tmac/ps.tmac Macros for use with grops; automatically loaded by troffrc
/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/tmac/pspic.tmac Definition of PSPIC macro, automatically loaded by ps.tmac.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/tmac/psold.tmac Macros to disable use of characters not present in older Post‐
Script printers (e.g., `eth' or `thorn').
/tmp/gropsXXXXXX Temporary file. See groff(1) for details on the location of tem‐
porary files.
SEE ALSO
afmtodit(1), groff(1), troff(1), pfbtops(1), groff_out(5), groff_font(5), groff_char(7), groff_tmac(5)
PostScript Language Document Structuring Conventions Specification ⟨http://partners.adobe.com/public/
developer/en/ps/5001.DSC_Spec.pdf⟩
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