GROFF

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 07 January 2002
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NAME

groff - front end for the groff document formatting system

SYNOPSIS

groff [ -abeghilpstvzCEGNRSUVXZ ] [ -w name ] [ -W name ] [ -m name ] [ -F dir ] [ -I dir ] [ -T dev ] [ -f fam ] [ -M dir ] [ -d cs ] [ -r cn ] [ -n num ] [ -o list ] [ -P arg ] [ -L arg ] [files...]

It is possible to have whitespace between a command line option and its parameter.

DESCRIPTION

groff is a front-end to the groff document formatting system. Normally it runs the troff program and a postprocessor appropriate for the selected device. Available devices are:

ps: For PostScript printers and previewers
dvi: For TeX dvi format.
X75: For a 75dpi X11 previewer.
X100: For a 100dpi X11 previewer.
ascii: For typewriter-like devices.
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: For typewriter-like devices using the ISO Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1) character set.
utf8: For typewriter-like devices using the Unicode (ISO 10646) character set with UTF-8 encoding.
cp1047: For typewriter-like devices which use the EBCDIC code page IBM cp1047 (e.g. OS/390 Unix).
nippon: For typewriter-like devices using the Japanese-EUC character set.
lj4: For an HP LaserJet4-compatible (or other PCL5-compatible) printer.
lbp: For Canon CAPSL printers (LBP-4 and LBP-8 series laser printers).
html: To produce HTML output.

The postprocessor to be used for a device is specified by the postpro command in the device description file. This can be overridden with the -X option.

The default device is ps. It can optionally preprocess with any of pic, eqn, grn, grap, tbl, refer, or soelim.

Options without an argument can be grouped behind a single -. A filename of - denotes the standard input.

The grog command can be used to guess the correct groff command to use to format a file.

OPTIONS

-h: Print a help message.
-e: Preprocess with eqn.
-t: Preprocess with tbl.
-g: Preprocess with grn.
-G: Preprocess with grap.
-p: Preprocess with pic.
-s: Preprocess with soelim.
-Idir: This option is as described in soelim(1). This option implies the -s option.
-R: Preprocess with refer. No mechanism is provided for passing arguments to refer because most refer options have equivalent commands which can be included in the file. See refer(1) for more details.
-v: Make programs run by groff print out their version number.
-V: Print the pipeline on stdout instead of executing it.
-z: Suppress output from troff. Only error messages will be printed.
-Z: Do not postprocess the output of troff. Normally groff will automatically run the appropriate postprocessor.
-Parg: Pass arg to the postprocessor. Each argument should be passed with a separate -P option. Note that groff does not prepend - to arg before passing it to the postprocessor.
-l: Send the output to a spooler for printing. The command used for this is specified by the print command in the device description file (if not present, -l has no effect).
-Larg: Pass arg to the spooler. Each argument should be passed with a separate -L option. Note that groff does not prepend - to arg before passing it to the postprocessor. If there is no print command in the device description file, -L is ignored.
-Tdev: Prepare output for device dev. The default device is ps.
-X: Preview with gxditview instead of using the usual postprocessor. Groff passes gxditview a -printCommand option which will make the Print action do what groff would have done if the -l option had been given. This is unlikely to produce good results except with -Tps.
-N: Don't allow newlines with eqn delimiters. This is the same as the -N option in eqn.
-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.
-U: Unsafe mode. Reverts to the old unsafe behaviour.
-a
-b

-i

-C

-E

-wname

-Wname

-mname

-olist

-dcs

-rcn

-Fdir

-Mdir

-ffam

-nnum
These are as described in troff(1).

ENVIRONMENT

GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX: If this is set X, then groff will run Xtroff instead of troff. This also applies to tbl, pic, eqn, grn, refer, and soelim. It does not apply to grap, grops, grodvi, grotty, grolj4, grohtml, and gxditview.
GROFF_TMAC_PATH: A colon separated list of directories in which to search for macro files in addition to the default directories. See troff(1) for more details.
GROFF_TYPESETTER: Default device.
GROFF_FONT_PATH: A colon separated list of directories in which to search for the devname directory in addition to the default one. See troff(1) for more details.
GROFF_BIN_PATH: This search path, followed by PATH, will be used for commands executed by groff. If not set, `/usr/bin' is prepended to PATH.
GROFF_TMPDIR: The directory in which temporary files will be created. If this is not set and TMPDIR is set, temporary files will be created in that directory. Otherwise temporary files will be created in /tmp. The grops(1) and refer(1) commands can create temporary files.

FILES

u+3n

: /usr/share/groff/1.17.2/font/devname/DESC Device description file for device name.
/usr/share/groff/1.17.2/font/devname/F: Font file for font F of device name.

Note that on EBCDIC hosts, output devices ascii, latin1, and utf8 aren't available. Similarly, cp1047 is not available on ASCII based operating systems.

EXAMPLE

To print the man page foo.1 to the standard output using the latin-1 output device and less as the pager, the following command can be used:

: groff -mandoc -Tlatin1 foo.1 | less

Alternatively, you can say

: groff -m mandoc -Tlatin1 foo.1 | less

AUTHOR

James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>

BUGS

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.

COPYRIGHT

groff is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

groff is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with groff; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

AVAILABILITY

The most recent released version of groff is always available for anonymous ftp from ftp.gnu.org in the directory gnu/groff.

groff only supports the freely available grap implementation written by Ted Faber <faber@lunabase.org>. The actual version can be found at

: http://www.lunabase.org/~faber/Vault/software/grap/

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 13:10:57 GMT, May 21, 2013

Description: Manual Page

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