GROFF

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 11 November 2010
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NAME

groff - front-end for the groff document formatting system

SYNOPSIS

nopsis groff

ortOpt[] abcegilpstzCEGNRSUVXZ

ortOpt[] d cs

ortOpt[] f fam

ortOpt[] F dir

ortOpt[] I dir

ortOpt[] L arg

ortOpt[] m name

ortOpt[] M dir

ortOpt[] n num

ortOpt[] o list

ortOpt[] P arg

ortOpt[] r cn

ortOpt[] T dev

ortOpt[] w name

ortOpt[] W name

[file dSynopsis nopsis groff

ortOpt h

| dSynopsis nopsis groff

ortOpt v

| [option dSynopsis 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

ortOpt

(minus character). A filename of

ortOpt

(minus character) 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 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 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. [tDef e] Preprocess with eqn. [tDef g] Preprocess with grn. [tDef G] Preprocess with grap. [tDef h help] Print a help message. [tDef I dir] Add search directory for soelim(1). This option implies the

ortOpt s

option. [tDef 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

ortOpt L

and

ortOpt X

[tDef L arg] Pass arg to the spooler program. Several arguments should be passed with a separate

ortOpt L

option each. Note that groff does not prepend

ortOpt(a minus sign) to

arg before passing it to the spooler program. [tDef N] Don't allow newlines within eqn delimiters. This is the same as the

ortOpt N

option in eqn. [tDef p] Preprocess with pic. [tDef P -option] [tDef+ P -option CB]-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 postprocessor. For example, to pass a title to the gxditview postprocessor, the shell command

ellCommand groff -X -P -title -P 'groff it' I]foo]

: is equivalent to

ellCommand groff -X -Z I]foo] | gxditview -title 'groff it'

[tDef 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. [tDef s] Preprocess with soelim. [tDef S] Safer mode. Pass the

ortOpt 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. [tDef t] Preprocess with tbl. [tDef T dev] Set output device to dev. The possible values in groff are ascii, cp1047, dvi, html, latin1, lbp, lj4, ps, utf8, X75, and X100. Additionally, X75-12 and X100-12 are available for documents which use 12pt as the base document size. The default device is ps. [tDef U] Unsafe mode. Reverts to the (old) unsafe behaviour; see option

ortOpt S

[tDef 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

ortOpt v

to all subprograms. [tDef V] Output the pipeline that would be run by groff (as a wrapper program), but do not execute it. [tDef X] Use gxditview instead of using the usual postprocessor to (pre)view a document. The printing spooler behavior as outlined with options

ortOpt l

and

ortOpt 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.

ortOpt X

only produces good results with

ortOpt Tps

ortOpt TX75

ortOpt TX75-12

ortOpt TX100

and

ortOpt TX100-12

The default resolution for previewing

ortOpt Tps

output is 75dpi; this can be changed by passing the

ortOpt resolution

option to gxditview, for example

ellCommand groff -X -P-resolution -P100 -man foo.1

[tDef z] Suppress output generated by troff. Only error messages will be printed. [tDef Z] Do not postprocess the output of troff that is normally called automatically by groff. This will print the intermediate output to standard 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). [tDef a] ascii approximation of output. [tDef b] backtrace on error or warning. [tDef c] disable color output. [tDef C] enable compatibility mode. [tDef d cs] [tDef+ d name=s] define string. [tDef E] disable troff error messages. [tDef f fam] set default font family. [tDef F dir] set path for font DESC files. [tDef i] process standard input after the specified input files. [tDef m name] include macro file I]name]B].tmac] (or B]tmac.]I]name]); see also groff_tmac(5). [tDef M dir] path for macro files. [tDef n num] number the first page num. [tDef o list] output only pages in list. [tDef r cn] [tDef+ r name=n] set number register. [tDef w name] enable warning name. [tDef 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 constitute 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.

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 preprocessors distributed with the groff package are

eqn(1): for mathematical formulae,
grn(1): for including gremlin(1) pictures,
pic(1): for drawing diagrams,
refer(1): for bibliographic references,
soelim(1): for including macro files from standard locations, and
tbl(1): for tables. 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

ortOpt m

The groff system 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

ortOpt man

ortOpt 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

ortOpt mandoc

ortOpt m

mandoc.

mdoc: The BSD-style man page format; see groff_mdoc(7). It can be specified on the command line as

ortOpt mdoc

ortOpt m

mdoc.

me: The classical me document format; see groff_me(7). It can be specified on the command line as

ortOpt me

ortOpt m

me.

mm: The classical mm document format; see groff_mm(7). It can be specified on the command line as

ortOpt mm

ortOpt m

mm.

ms: The classical ms document format; see groff_ms(7). It can be specified on the command line as

ortOpt ms

ortOpt 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).

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 classical troff and nroff, as well as the groff extensions. The command line option

ortOpt C

switches troff into compatibility 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

ortOpt 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).
nippon: Text output using the Japanese-EUC character set.
dvi: TeX DVI format.
html: HTML output.
ascii8: For typewriter-like devices. Unlike ascii, this device is 8 bit clean. This device is intended to be used for codesets other than ASCII and ISO-8859-1.
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).
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 previewers 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 previewers 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 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 format,
grops(1): for PostScript. 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.
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 operating system. For example, DOS and Windows use a semicolon instead.

vVarGROFF_BIN_PATH: This search path, followed by vVar$PATH will be used for commands that are executed by groff. If it is not set then the directory where the groff binaries were installed is prepended to vVarPATH
vVarGROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX: When there is a need to run different roff implementations at the same time groff provides the facility to prepend a prefix to most of its programs that could provoke name clashings at run time (default is to have none). Historically, this prefix was the character g, but it can be anything. For example, gtroff stood for groff's troff, gtbl for the groff version of tbl. By setting vVarGROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX to different values, the different roff installations can be addressed. More exactly, if it is set to prefix xxx then groff as a wrapper program will internally call xxxtroff instead of troff. This also applies to the preprocessors eqn, grn, pic, refer, tbl, soelim, and to the utilities indxbib and lookbib. This feature does not apply to any programs different from the ones above (most notably groff itself) since they are unique to the groff package.
vVarGROFF_FONT_PATH: A list of directories in which to search for the devname directory in addition to the default ones. See troff(1) and groff_font(5) for more details.
vVarGROFF_TMAC_PATH: A list of directories in which to search for macro files in addition to the default directories. See troff(1) and groff_tmac(5) for more details.
vVarGROFF_TMPDIR: The directory in which temporary files will be created. If this is not set but the environment variable vVarTMPDIR instead, temporary files will be created in the directory vVar$TMPDIR Otherwise temporary files will be created in /tmp. The refer(1), groffer(1), grohtml(1), and grops(1) commands use temporary files.
vVarGROFF_TYPESETTER: Preset the default device. If this is not set the ps device is used as default. This device name is overwritten by the option

ortOpt 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/1.18.1.4/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/1.18.1.4/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 troff. To process a roff file using the preprocessors tbl and pic and the me macro set, classical troff had to be called by

ellCommand pic foo.me | tbl | troff -me -Tlatin1 | grotty

Using groff, this pipe can be shortened to the equivalent command

ellCommand 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 specifying shell left quotes)

ellCommand `grog -Tlatin1 foo.me`

The simplest way is to view the contents in an automated way by calling

ellCommand 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 page cp1047 is not available on ASCII based operating systems. 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 The most recent released version of groff is available for anonymous ftp at the Three groff mailing lists are available:

: for reporting bugs,
: for general discussion of groff,
: 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 The actual version can be found at the This is the only grap version supported by groff.

AUTHORS

Copyright © 1989, 2002 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 This document is based on the original groff man page written by It was rewritten, enhanced, and put under the FDL license by It is maintained by 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 documentation files mostly use the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL).