From Linux Man Pages
groffer - display groff files and man pages on X and tty
SYNOPSIS
groffer [option...] [--] [filespec...]
groffer --apropos|--apropos-data|--apropos-devel|--apropos-progs name
groffer -h|--help
groffer -v|--version
DESCRIPTION
The groffer program is the easiest way to use groff(1). It can display arbitrary documents written in the
groff(7) language or other roff(7) languages that are compatible to the original troff language. The groffer
program also includes many of the features for finding and displaying the UNIX manual pages (man pages), such
that it can be used as a replacement for a man(1) program. Moreover, compressed files that can be handled by
gzip(1) or bzip2(1) are decompressed on-the-fly.
The normal usage is quite simple by supplying a file name or name of a man page without further options. But the
option handling has many possibilities for creating special behaviors. This can be done in configuration files,
with the shell environment variable $GROFFER_OPT, or on the command line.
The output can be generated and viewed in several different ways available for groff. This includes the groff
native X viewer gxditview(1), each Postcript or dvi display program, a web browser by generating html in www-
mode, or several text modes in text terminals.
Most of the options that must be named when running groff directly are determined automatically for groffer, due
to the internal usage of the grog(1) program. But all parts can also be controlled manually by arguments.
Several file names can be specified on the command line arguments. They are transformed into a single document
in the normal way of groff.
OPTION OVERVIEW
breaking options
[--apropos name] [--apropos-data name] [--apropos-devel name] [--apropos-progs name] [-h|--help] [-v
|--version]
groffer mode options
[--auto] [--default] [--default-modes mode1,mode2,...] [--dvi] [--dvi-viewer prog] [--groff] [--html]
[--html-viewer prog] [--man] [--mode display_mode] [--no-man] [--pdf] [--pdf-viewer prog] [--ps] [--ps-
viewer prog] [--text] [--tty] [--tty-viewer prog] [--www] [--www-viewer prog] [--x|--X] [--x-viewer|--X-
viewer prog]
development options
[--debug] [--shell]
options related to groff
[-P|--postproc-arg opt_or_arg] [-Q|--source] [-T|--device device] [-Z|--intermediate-output|--ditroff]
All further groff short options are accepted.
X Window toolkit options
[--bd pixels] [--bg|--background color] [--bw pixels] [--display X-display] [--fg|--foreground color]
[--ft|--font font_name] [--geometry size_pos] [--resolution value] [--rv] [--title string] [--xrm
X_resource]
options from man
[--all] [--ascii] [--ditroff] [--extension suffix] [--locale language] [--local-file] [--manpath
dir1:dir2:...] [--pager program] [--sections sec1:sec2:...] [--systems sys1,sys2,...] [--troff-device
device] [--whatis]
Further long options of GNU man are accepted as well.
filespec argument
No filespec parameters means standard input.
- stands for standard input (can occur several times).
filename the path name of an existing file.
man:name(section)
name(section)
search the man page name in man section section.
man:name.s
name.s if s is a character in [1-9on], search for a man page name in man section s.
man:name man page in the lowest man section that has name.
s name if s is a character in [1-9on], search for a man page name in man section s.
name if name is not an existing file search for the man page name in the lowest man section.
OPTION DETAILS
The groffer program can usually be run with very few options. But for special purposes, it supports many op-
tions. These can be classified in 5 option classes.
All short options of groffer are compatible with the short options of groff(1). All long options of groffer are
compatible with the long options of man(1).
groffer breaking Options
As soon as one of these options is found on the command line it is executed, printed to standard output, and the
running groffer is terminated thereafter. All other arguments are ignored.
--apropos name
Start the apropos(1) command for searching within man page descriptions. That slightly differs from the
strange behavior of the --apropos program of man(1), which has no argument of its own, but takes the file
arguments instead. Practically both concepts are compatible.
--apropos-data name
Show only the apropos(1) descriptions for data documents, in the man(7) sections 4, 5, and 7.
--apropos-devel name
Show only the apropos(1) descriptions for development documents, in the man(7) sections 2, 3, and 9.
--apropos-progs name
Show only the apropos(1) descriptions for documents on programs, in the man(7) sections 1, 6, and 8.
-h | --help
Print a helping information with a short explanation of option sto standard output.
-v | --version
Print version information to standard output.
groffer Mode Options
The display mode and the viewer programs are determined by these options. If none of these mode and viewer op-
tions is specified groffer tries to find a suitable display mode automatically.
--auto Equivalent to --mode=auto.
--default
Reset all configuration from previously processed command line options to the default values. This is
useful to wipe out all former options of the configuration, in $GROFFER_OPT, and restart option processing
using only the rest of the command line.
--default-modes mode1,mode2,...
Set the sequence of modes for auto mode to the comma separated list given in the argument. See --mode for
details on modes. Display in the default manner; actually, this means to try the modes x, ps, and tty in
this sequence.
--dvi Equivalent to --mode=dvi.
--dvi-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for dvi mode. This can be a file name or a program to be searched in $PATH. Known
dvi viewers inlude xdvi(1) and dvilx(1) In each case, arguments can be provided additionally.
--groff
Equivalent to --mode=groff.
--html Equivalent to --mode=html.
--html-viewer
Equivalent to --www-viewer.
--mode value
Set the display mode. The following mode values are recognized:
auto Select the automatic determination of the display mode. The sequence of modes that are tried can
be set with the --default-modes option. Useful for restoring the default mode when a different
mode was specified before.
dvi Display formatted input in a dvi viewer program. By default, the formatted input is displayed with
the xdvi(1) program. --dvi.
groff After the file determination, switch groffer to process the input like groff(1) would do . This
disables the groffer viewing features.
html Translate the input into html format and display the result in a web browser program. By default,
the existence of a sequence of standard web browsers is tested, starting with konqueror(1) and
mozilla(1). The text html viewer is lynx(1).
pdf Display formatted input in a PDF (Portable Document Format) viewer program. By default, the input
is formatted by groff using the Postscript device, then it is transformed into the PDF file format
using gs(1), and finally displayed either with the xpdf(1) or the acroread(1) program. PDF has a
big advantage because the text is displayed graphically and is searchable as well. But as the
transformation takes a considerable amount of time, this mode is not suitable as a default device
for the auto mode.
ps Display formatted input in a Postscript viewer program. By default, the formatted input is dis-
played with the ghostview(1) program.
text Format in a groff text mode and write the result to standard output without a pager or viewer pro-
gram. The text device, latin1 by default, can be chosen with option -T.
tty Format in a groff text mode and write the result to standard output using a text pager program,
even when in X Window.
www Equivalent to --www.
X Display formatted input in a native roff viewer. By default, the formatted input is displayed with
the gxditview(1) program, being distributed together with groff, or with xditview(1), which is dis-
tributed as a standard X tool.
x Equivalent to --mode=X.
The following modes do not use the groffer viewing features. They are only interesting for advanced ap-
plications.
groff Generate device output with plain groff without using the special viewing features of groffer. If
no device was specified by option -T the groff default ps is assumed.
source Display the source code of the input without formatting; equivalent to -Q.
--pdf Equivalent to --mode=pdf.
--pdf-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for pdf mode. This can be a file name or a program to be searched in $PATH. In
each case, arguments can be provided additionally.
--ps Equivalent to --mode=ps.
--ps-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for ps mode. This can be a file name or a program to be searched in $PATH. Common
Postscript viewers inlude gv(1), ghostview(1), and gs(1), In each case, arguments can be provided addi-
tionally.
--text Equivalent to --mode=text.
--tty Equivalent to --mode=tty.
--tty-viewer
Choose tty display mode, that means displaying in a text pager even when in X; eqivalent to --mode=tty.
--www Equivalent to --mode=www.
--www-viewer prog
Set the web browser program for viewing in www mode. Each program that accepts html input and allows the
file://localhost/dir/file syntax on the command line is suitable as viewer program; it can be the path
name of an executable file or a program in $PATH. In each case, arguments can be provided additionally.
-X | --X | --x
Equivalent to --mode=X.
--X-viewer | --x-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for x mode. Suitable viewer programs are gxditview(1) and xditview(1). But the
argument can be any executable file or a program in $PATH. In each case, arguments can be provided addi-
tionally.
-- Signals the end of option processing; all remaining arguments are interpreted as filespec parameters.
Besides these, groffer accepts all arguments that are valid for the groff(1) program. All non-groffer options
are sent unmodified via grog to groff. Postprocessors, macro packages, compatibility with classical troff, and
much more can be manually specified.
Options for Development
--debug
Print debugging information for development only. Actually, a function call stack is printed if an error
occurs.
--shell shell_program
Specify the shell under which the groffer script should be run. The script first tests whether this op-
tion is set (either by configuration, within $GROFF_OPT or as a command line option); if so, the script is
rerun under the shell program specified with the option argument.
-Q | --source
Output the roff source code of the input files without further processing. This is the equivalent
--mode=source.
Other useful debugging options are the groff options -V and -Z and option --mode=groff.
Options related to groff
All short options of groffer are compatible with the short options of groff(1). The following of groff options
have either an additional special meaning within groffer or make sense for normal usage.
Because of the special outputting behavior of the groff options -V and -Z groffer was designed to be switched in-
to groff mode by these; the groffer viewing features are disabled there. The other groff options do not switch
the mode, but allow to customize the formatting process.
-a This generates an ascii approximation of output in text modes. That could be important when the text
pager has problems with control sequences.
-m file
Add file as a groff macro file. This is useful in case it cannot be recognized automatically.
-P opt_or_arg
Send the argument opt_or_arg as an option or option argument to the actual groff postprocessor.
-T | --device devname
This option determines groff's output device. The most important devices are the text output devices for
referring to the different character sets, such as ascii, utf8, latin1, and others. Each of these argu-
ments switches groffer into a text mode using this device, to mode tty if the actual mode is not a text
mode. The following devname arguments are mapped to the corresponding groffer --mode=devname option: dvi,
html, and ps. All X* arguments are mapped to mode X. Each other devname argument switches to mode groff
using this device.
-V Switch into groff mode and show only the groff calling pipe without formatting the input. This an ad-
vanced option from groff(1), only useful for debugging.
-X was made equivalent to --mode=x; this slightly enhances the facility of groff's option.
-Z | --intermediate-output | --ditroff
Switch into groff mode and format the input with groff intermediate output without postprocessing; see
groff_out(1). This is equivalent to option --ditroff of man, which can be used as well.
All other groff options are supported by groffer, but they are just transparently transferred to groff without
any intervention. The options that are not explicitly handled by groffer are transparently passed to groff.
Therefore these transparent options are not documented here, but in groff(1). Due to the automatism in groffer,
none of these groff options should be needed, except for advanced usage.
X Window toolkit Options
The following long options were adapted from the corresponding X Toolkit options. groffer will pass them to the
actual viewer program if it is an X Window program. Otherwise these options are ignored.
Unfortunately these options use the old style of a single minus for long options. For groffer that was changed
to the standard with using a double minus for long options, for example, groffer uses the option --font for the X
option -font.
See X(1), X(7), and the documentation on the X toolkit options for more details on these options and their argu-
ments.
--background color
Set the background color of the viewer window.
--bd pixels
Specifies the color of the border surrounding the viewer window.
--bg color
This is equivalent to --background.
--bw pixels
Specifies the width in pixels of the border surrounding the viewer window.
--display X-display
Set the X display on which the viewer program shall be started, see the X Window documentation for the
syntax of the argument.
--foreground color
Set the foreground color of the viewer window.
--fg color
This is equivalent to -foreground.
--font font_name
Set the font used by the viewer window. The argument is an X font name.
--ft font_name
This is equivalent to --ft.
--geometry size_pos
Set the geometry of the display window, that means its size and its starting position. See X(7) for the
syntax of the argument.
--resolution value
Set X resolution in dpi (dots per inch) in some viewer programs. The only supported dpi values are 75 and
100. Actually, the default resolution for groffer is set to 75.
--rv Reverse foreground and background color of the viewer window.
--title 'some text'
Set the title for the viewer window.
--xrm 'resource'
Set X resource.
Options from man
The long options of groffer were synchronized with the long options of GNUman. All long options of GNU man are
recognized, but not all of these options are important to groffer, so most of them are just ignored.
The following two options were added by groffer for choosing whether the file name arguments are interpreted as
names for local files or as a search pattern for man pages. The default is looking up for local files.
--man Check the non-option command line arguments (filespecs) first on being man pages, then whether they repre-
sent an existing file. By default, a filespec is first tested whether it is an existing file.
--no-man | --local-file
Do not check for man pages. --local-file is the corresponding man option.
In the following, the man options that have a special meaning for groffer are documented.
The full set of long and short options of the GNU man program can be passed via the environment variable $MANOPT;
see man(1) if your system has GNU man installed.
--all In searching man pages, retrieve all suitable documents instead of only one.
-7 | --ascii
In text modes, display ASCII translation of special characters.
--ditroff
Eqivalent to groffer -Z.
--extension suffix
Restrict man page search to file names that have suffix appended to their section element. For example,
in the file name /usr/share/man/man3/terminfo.3ncurses.gz the man page extension is ncurses.
--locale language
Set the language for man pages. This has the same effect, but overwrites $LANG
--location
Print the location of the retrieved files to standard error.
--no-location
Do not display the location of retrieved files; this resets a former call to --location. This was added
by groffer.
--manpath 'dir1:dir2:...'
Use the specified search path for retrieving man pages instead of the program defaults. If the argument
is set to the empty string "" the search for man page is disabled.
--pager
Set the pager program in tty mode; default is less. This is equivalent to --tty-viewer.
--sections 'sec1:sec2:...'
Restrict searching for man pages to the given sections, a colon-separated list.
--systems 'sys1,sys2,...'
Search for man pages for the given operating systems; the argument systems is a comma-separated list.
--whatis
Instead of displaying the content, get the one-liner description from the retrieved man page files -- or
say that it is not a man page.
--where
Eqivalent to --location.
Additionally, the following short option of man is supported as well.
Filespec Arguments
A filespec parameter is an argument meaning an input source, such as a file name or template for searching
man pages. These input sources are collected and composed into a single output file such as groff does.
The strange POSIX behavior that maps all arguments behind the first non-option argument into filespec arguments
is ignored. The GNU behavior to recognize options even when mixed with filespec arguments is used througout.
But, as usual, the double minus argument -- still takes all following arguments as filespecs.
Each filespec parameters can have one of the following forms.
No filespec parameters means that groffer waits for standard input. The minus option - stands for standard in-
put, too, but can occur several times. Next filespec is tested whether it is the path name of an existing file.
Otherwise it is assumed as a searching pattern for a man page.
On each system, the man pages are sorted according to their content into several sections. The classical man
sections have a single-character name, either are a digit from 1 to 9 or one of the characters n or o. In the
following, a stand-alone character s means this scheme.
The internal precedence of man for searching man pages with the same name within several sections goes according
to the classical single-character sequence. On some systems, this single character can be extended by a follow-
ing string. But the special groffer man page facility is based on the classical single character sections.
man:name(section) and name(section) search the man page name in man section section, where section can be any
string, but it must exist in the man system.
Next some patterns based on the classical man sections were constructed. man:name.s and name.s search for a
man page name in man section s if s is a classical man section mentioned above. Otherwise search for a man page
named name.s in the lowest man section.
Now man:name searches for a man page in the lowest man section that has a document called name.
The pattern s name originates from a strange argument parsing of the man program. If s is a classical man sec-
tion interpret it as a search for a man page called name in man section s, otherwise interpret s as a file argu-
ment and name as another filespec argument.
We are left with the argument name which is not an existing file. So this searches for the man page called name
in the lowest man section that has a document for this name.
Several file name arguments can be supplied. They are mixed by groff into a single document. Note that the set
of option arguments must fit to all of these file arguments. So they should have at least the same style of the
groff language.
OUTPUT MODES
By default, the groffer program collects all input into a single file, formats it with the groff program for a
certain device, and then chooses a suitable viewer program. The device and viewer process in groffer is called a
mode. The mode and viewer of a running groffer program is selected automatically, but the user can also choose
it with options. The modes are selected by option the arguments of --mode=anymode. Additionally, each of this
argument can be specified as an option of its own, such as --anymode. Most of these modes have a viewer program,
which can be chosen by an option that is constructed like --anymode-viewer.
Several different modes are offered, graphical X modes, text modes, and some direct groff modes for debugging and
development.
By default, groffer first tries whether x mode is possible, then ps mode, and finally tty mode. This mode test-
ing sequence for auto mode can be changed by specifying a comma separated list of modes with the option
--default-modes.
The searching for man pages and the decompression of the input are active in every mode.
Graphical Display Modes
The graphical display modes work only in the X Window environment (or similar implementations within other win-
dowing environments). The environment variable $DISPLAY and the option --display are used for specifying the X
display to be used. If neither is given, groffer assumes that no X and changes to one text mode. You can change
this automatic behavior by the option --default-modes.
Known viewers for the graphical display modes and their standard X Window viewer progams are
� X Window roff viewers such as gxditview(1) or xditview(1) (in x or X mode),
� in a Postscript viewer (ps mode),
� in a dvi viewer program (dvi mode),
� in a PDF viewer (pdf mode),
� in a web browser (html or www mode),
The pdf mode has a major advantage -- it is the only graphical diplay mode that allows to search for text within
the viewer; this can be a really important feature. Unfortunately, it takes some time to transform the input in-
to the PDF format, so it was not chosen as the major mode.
These graphical viewers can be customized by options of the X Window Toolkit. But the groffer options use a
leading double minus instead of the single minus used by the X Window Toolkit.
Text mode
There are to modes for text output, mode text for plain output without a pager and mode tty for a text output on
a text terminal using some pager program.
If the variable $DISPLAY is not set or empty, groffer assumes that it should use tty mode.
In the actual implementation, the groff output device latin1 is chosen for text modes. This can be changed by
specifying option -T or --device.
The pager to be used can be specified by one of the options --pager and --tty-viewer, or by the environment vari-
able $PAGER. If all of this is not used the less(1) program with the option -r for correctly displaying control
sequences is used as the default pager.
Special Modes for Debugging and Development
These modes use the groffer file determination and decompression. This is combined into a single input file that
is fed directly into groff with different strategy without the groffer viewing facilities. These modes are re-
garded as advanced, they are useful for debugging and development purposes.
The source mode with just displays the generated input. The groff mode passes the input to groff using only some
suitable options provided to groffer. This enables the user to save the generated output into a file or pipe it
into another program.
In groff mode, the option -Z disables post-processing, thus producing the groff intermediate output. In this
mode, the input is formatted, but not postprocessed; see groff_out(5) for details.
All groff short options are supported by groffer.
MAN PAGE SEARCHING
The default behavior of groffer is to first test whether a file parameter represents a local file; if it is not
an existing file name, it is assumed to represent a name of a man page. This behavior can be modified by the
following options.
--man forces to interpret all file parameters as filespecs for searching man pages.
--no-man
--local-file
disable the man searching; so only local files are displayed.
If neither a local file nor a man page was retrieved for some file parameter a warning is issued on standard er-
ror, but processing is continued.
The groffer program provides a search facility for man pages. All long options, all environment variables, and
most of the functionality of the GNU man(1) program were implemented. This inludes the extended file names of
man pages, for example, the man page of groff in man section 7 may be stored under
/usr/share/man/man7/groff.7.gz, where /usr/share/man/ is part of the man path, the subdirectory man7 and the file
extension .7 refer to the man section 7; .gz shows the compression of the file.
The cat pages (preformatted man pages) are intentionally excluded from the search because groffer is a roff pro-
gram that wants to format by its own. With the excellent performance of the actual computers, the preformatted
man pages aren't necessary any longer.
The algorithm for retrieving man pages uses five search methods. They are successively tried until a method
works.
� The search path can be manually specified by using the option --manpath. An empty argument disables the
man page searching. This overwrites the other methods.
� If this is not available the environment variable $MANPATH is searched.
� If this is empty, the program tries to read it from the environment variable $MANOPT.
� If this does not work a reasonable default path from $PATH is searched for man pages.
� If this does not work, the manpath(1) program for determining a path of man directories is tried.
After this, the path elements for the language (locale) and operating system specific man pages are added to the
man path; their sequence is determined automatically. For example, both /usr/share/man/linux/fr and
/usr/share/man/fr/linux for french linux man pages are found. The language and operating system names are deter-
mined from both environment variables and command line options.
The locale (language) is determined like in GNU man, that is from highest to lowest precedence:
� --locale
� $GROFFER_OPT
� $MANOPT
� $LCALL
� $LC_MESSAGES
� $LANG.
The language locale is usually specified in the POSIX 1003.1 based format:
<language>[_<territory>[.<character-set>[,<version>]]],
but the two-letter code in <language> is sufficient for most purposes.
If no man pages for a complicated locale are found the country part consisting of the first two characters (with-
out the `_', `.', and `,', parts) of the locale is searched as well.
If still not found the corresponding man page in the default language is used instead. As usual, this default
can be specified by one of C or POSIX. The man pages in the default language are usually in English.
Several operating systems can be given by appending their names, separated by a comma. This is then specified by
the environment variable $SYSTEM or by the command line option --systems. The precedence is similar to the lo-
cale case above from highest to lowest precedence: Topic --systems
� $GROFFER_OPT
� $MANOPT
� $SYSTEM.
When searching for man pages this man path with the additional language and system specific directories is used.
The search can further be restricted by limiting it to certain sections. A single section can be specified with-
in each filespec argument, several sections as a colon-separated list in command line option --sections or envi-
ronment variable $MANSECT. When no section was specified a set of standard sections is searched until a suitable
man page was found.
Finally, the search can be restricted to a so-called extension. This is a postfix that acts like a subsection.
It can be specified by --extension or environment variable $EXTENSION.
For further details on man page searching, see man(1).
DECOMPRESSION
The program has a decompression facility. If standard input or a file that was retrieved from the command line
parameters is compressed with a format that is supported by either gzip(1) or bzip2(1) it is decompressed on-the-
fly. This includes the GNU .gz, .bz2, and the traditional .Z compression. The program displays the concatena-
tion of all decompressed input in the sequence that was specified on the command line.
ENVIRONMENT
The groffer programs supports many system variables, most of them by courtesy of other programs. All environment
variables of groff(1) and GNU man(1) and some standard system variables are honored.
Native groffer Variables
$GROFFER_OPT
Store options for a run of groffer. The options specified in this variable are overridden by the options
given on the command line. The content of this variable is run through the shell builtin `eval'; so argu-
ments containing white-space or special shell characters should be quoted.
System Variables
The groffer program is a shell script that is run through /bin/sh, which can be internally linked to programs
like bash(1). The corresponding system environment is automatically effective. The following variables have a
special meaning for groffer.
$DISPLAY
If this variable is set this indicates that the X Window system is running. Testing this variable decides
on whether graphical or text output is generated. This variable should not be changed by the user care-
lessly, but it can be used to start the graphical groffer on a remote X terminal. For example, depending
on your system, groffer can be started on the second monitor by the command
sh# DISPLAY=:0.1 groffer what.ever&
$LC_ALL
$LC_MESSAGES
$LANG If one of these variables is set (in the above sequence), its content is interpreted as the locale, the
language to be used, especially when retrieving man pages. A locale name is typically of the form lan-
guage[_territory[.codeset[@modifier]]], where language is an ISO 639 language code, territory is an ISO
3166 country code, and codeset is a character set or encoding identifier like ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8; see
setlocale(3). The locale values C and POSIX stand for the default, i.e. the man page directories without
a language prefix. This is the same behavior as when all 3 variables are unset.
$PAGER This variable can be used to set the pager for the tty output. For example, to disable the use of a pager
completely set this variable to the cat(1) program
sh# PAGER=cat groffer anything
$PATH All programs within the groffer shell script are called without a fixed path. Thus this environment vari-
able determines the set of programs used within the run of groffer.
$POSIXLY_CORRECT
If set to a non-empty value this chooses the POSIX mode. This is done internally by some shells. groffer
ignores the bad POSIX behavior for option processing, that means that option processing will be finished
as soon as a non-option argument is found. Instead the GNU behavior of freely mixing options and filespec
arguments is used in any case. Usually, you do not want to set this environment variable externally.
Groff Variables
The groffer program internally calls groff, so all environment variables documented in groff(1) are internally
used within groffer as well. The following variables have a direct meaning for the groffer program.
$GROFF_TMPDIR
If the value of this variable is an existing, writable directory, groffer uses it for storing its tempo-
rary files, just as groff does.
Man Variables
Parts of the functionality of the man program were implemented in groffer; support for all environment variables
documented in man(1) was added to groffer, but the meaning was slightly modified due to the different approach in
groffer; but the user interface is the same. The man environment variables can be overwritten by options provid-
ed with $MANOPT, which in turn is overwritten by the command line.
$EXTENSION
Restrict the search for man pages to files having this extension. This is overridden by option
--extension; see there for details.
$MANOPT
This variable contains options as a preset for man(1). As not all of these are relevant for groffer only
the essential parts of its value are extracted. The options specified in this variable overwrite the val-
ues of the other environment variables taht are specific to man. All options specified in this variable
are overridden by the options given on the command line.
$MANPATH
If set, this variable contains the directories in which the man page trees are stored. This is overridden
by option --manpath.
$MANSECT
If this is a colon separated list of section names, the search for man pages is restricted to those manual
sections in that order. This is overridden by option --sections.
$SYSTEM
If this is set to a comma separated list of names these are interpreted as man page trees for different
operating systems. This variable can be overwritten by option --systems; see there for details.
The environment variable $MANROFFSEQ is ignored by groffer because the necessary preprocessors are determined au-
tomatically.
CONFIGURATION FILES
The groffer program can be preconfigured by two configuration files. This configuration can be overridden at
each program start by command line options or by the environment variable $GROFFER_OPT.
/etc/groff/groffer.conf
System-wide configuration file for groffer.
$HOME/.groff/groffer.conf
User-specific configuration file for groffer, where $HOME denotes the user's home directory. This script
is called after the system-wide configuration file to enable overriding by the user.
Their lines either start with a minus character or are shell commands. Arbitrary spaces are allowed at the be-
ginning, they are just ignored. The lines with the beginning minus are appended to the existing value of $GROF-
FER_OPT. This easily allows to set general groffer options that are used with any call of groffer.
After the transformation of the minus lines the emerging shell scripts that are called by groffer using the
`. filename' syntax.
The only option that needs a minus line in the configuration files is --shell. The reason is that its argument
must be called at a very early stage before the whole syntax of the configuration can be transformed.
It makes sense to use these configuration files for the following tasks:
� Preset command line options by writing them into lines starting with a minus sign.
� Preset environment variables recognized by groffer.
� Write a function for calling a viewer program for a special mode and feed this name into its corresponding
--mode-viewer option. Note that the name of such a function must coincide with some existing program in the
system path $PATH in order to be recognized by groffer.
As an example, consider the following configuration file in ~/.groff/groffer.conf, say.
# groffer configuration file
#
# groffer options that are used in each call of groffer
--shell=/bin/bash
--resolution=100
--foreground=DarkBlue
--x-viewer='gxditview -geometry 850x800'
#
# some shell commands
if test "$DISPLAY" = ""; then
DISPLAY='localhost:0.0'
fi
date >>~/mygroffer.log
This configuration sets four groffer options and runs two shell commands. This has the following effects:
� Lines starting with a # character are
� Use /bin/bash as the shell to run the groffer script.
� Take a resolution of 100 dpi and a text color of DarkBlue in all viewers that support this.
� Force gxditview(1) as the X-mode viewer using the geometry option for setting the width to 850 dpi and the
height to 800 dpi.
� The variable $DISPLAY is set to localhost:0.0 which allows to start groffer in the standard X display, even
when the program is called from a text console.
� Just for fun, the date of each groffer start is written to the file mygroffer.log in the home directory.
EXAMPLES
The usage of groffer is very easy. Usually, it is just called with a file name or man page. The following exam-
ples, however, show that groffer has much more fancy capabilities.
sh# groffer /usr/local/share/doc/groff/meintro.ms.gz
Decompress, format and display the compressed file meintro.ms.gz in the directory /usr/lo-
cal/share/doc/groff, using gxditview as graphical viewer when in X Window, or the less(1) pager program
when not in X.
sh# groffer groff
If the file ./groff exists use it as input. Otherwise interpret the argument as a search for the man page
named groff in the smallest possible man section, being secion 1 in this case.
sh# groffer man:groff
search for the man page of groff even when the file ./groff exists.
sh# groffer groff.7
sh# groffer 7 groff
search the man page of groff in man section 7. This section search works only for a digit or a single
character from a small set.
sh# groffer fb.modes
If the file ./fb.modes does not exist interpret this as a search for the man page of fb.modes. As the ex-
tension modes is not a single character in classical section style the argument is not split to a search
for fb.
sh# groffer groff troff(1)' man:roff
The arguments that are not existing files are looked-up as the following man pages: groff (automatic
search, should be found in man section 1), troff (in section 1), and roff (in the section with the lowest
number, being 7 in this case). The quotes around troff(1)' are necessary because the paranthesis are
special shell characters; escaping them with a backslash character \( and \) would be possible, too. The
formatted files are concatenated and displayed in one piece.
sh# LANG=de groffer --man --www --www-viever=mozilla ls
Retrieve the German man page (language de) for the ls program, decompress it, format it to html format
(www mode) and view the result in the web browser galeon . The option --man guarantees that the man page
is retrieved, even when a local file ls exists in the actual directory.
sh# groffer --source man:roff(7)'
Get the man page called roff in man section 7, decompress it, and print its unformatted content, its
source code.
sh# cat file.gz | groffer -Z -mfoo
Decompress the standard input, send this to groff intermediate mode without post-processing (groff option
-Z), using macro package by foo (groff option -m)
sh# echo '\f[CB]WOW!' |
> groffer --x --bg red --fg yellow --geometry 200x100 -
Display the word WOW! in a small window in constant-width bold font, using color yellow on red background.
COMPATIBILITY
The groffer shell script is compatible with both GNU and POSIX. POSIX compatibility refers to IEEE P1003.2/D11.2
of September 1991, a very early version of the POSIX standard that is still freely available in the internet.
Unfortunately, this version of the standard has `local' for shell function variables removed. As `local' is
needed for serious programming this temporary POSIX deprecation was ignored.
Most GNU shells are compatible with this interpretation of POSIX, but provide much more facilities. Nevertheless
this script uses only a restricted set of shell language elements and shell builtins. The groffer script should
work on most actual free and commercial operating systems.
The groffer program provides its own parser for command line options; it can handle option arguments and file
names containing white space and a large set of special characters.
The groffer shell script was tested with the following common implementations of the GNU shells: POSIX sh(1),
bash(1), and others. Free POSIX compatible shells and shell utilities for most operating systems are available
at the GNU software archive <http://www.gnu.org/software/>.
The shell can be chosen by the option --shell. This option can also be given to the environment variable
$GROFF_OPT. If you want to write it to one of the groffer configuration files you must use the single option
style, a line starting with --shell.
The groffer program provides its own parser for command line arguments that is compatible to both POSIX
getopts(1) and GNU getopt(1) except for shortcuts of long options. The following standard types of options are
supported.
� A single minus always refers to single character option or a combination thereof, for example, the groffer
short option combination -Qmfoo is equivalent to -Q -m foo.
� Long options are options with names longer than one character; they are always prededed by a double minus. An
option argument can either go to the next command line argument or be appended with an equal sign to the argu-
ment; for example, --long=arg is equivalent to --long arg .
� An argument of -- ends option parsing; all further command line arguments are interpreted as file name argu-
ments.
� By default, all command line arguments that are neither options nor option arguments are interpreted as file-
spec parameters and stored until option parsing has finished. For example, the command line
sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file2
is, by default, equivalent to
sh# groffer -a -o arg -- file1 file2
This behavior can be changed by setting the environment variable $POSIXLY_CORRECT to a non-empty value. Then the
strange POSIX non-option behavior is adopted, i. e. option processing is stopped as soon as the first non-option
argument is found and each following argument is taken as a file name. For example, in posixly correct mode, the
command line
sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file 2
is equivalent to
sh# groffer -- file1 -a -o arg file 2
As this leads to unwanted behavior in most cases, most people do not want to set $POSIXLY_CORRECT.
RELATED
groff(1)
troff(1)
Details on the options and environment variables available in groff; all of them can be used with groffer.
man(1) The standard program to diplay man pages. The information there is only useful if it is the man page for
GNU man. Then it documents the options and environment variables that are supported by groffer.
gxditview(1)
xditview(1x)
Viewers for groffer's x mode.
gv(1)
ghostview(1)
Viewers for groffer's ps mode.
gs(1) Transformer from ps to pdf; and a ps viewer.
xpdf(1)
Viewers for pdf files.
xdvi(1)
dvilx(1)
Viewers for groffer's dvi mode.
less(1)
Standard pager program for the tty mode.
gzip(1)
bzip2(1)
The decompression programs supported by groffer.
groff(7)
Documentation of the groff language.
grog(1)
Internally, groffer tries to guess the groff command line options from the input using this program.
groff_out(5)
Documentation on the groff intermediate output (ditroff output).
COPYING
Copyright (C) 2001,2002,2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of groff, a free software project. 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 op-
tion) any later version.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with groff, see the files COPYING and LI-
CENSE in the top directory of the groff source package. Or read the man page gpl(1). You can also write to the
Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
CATEGORY