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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTION OVERVIEW | OPTION DETAILS | OUTPUT MODES | MAN PAGE SEARCHING | DECOMPRESSION | ENVIRONMENT | CONFIGURATION FILES | EXAMPLES | COMPATIBILITY | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COPYING | AUTHORS | COLOPHON |
GROFFER(1) General Commands Manual GROFFER(1)
groffer - display groff files and man pages on X and tty
groffer [--] [filespec ....]
groffer [mode-option ....] [groff-options ....] [man-options ....]
[X-options ....] [--] [filespec ....]
groffer -h | --help
groffer -v | --version
The groffer program is the easiest way to use groff(1). It can
display arbitrary documents written in the groff language, see
groff(7), or other roff languages, see roff(7), that are compatible
to the original troff language. It finds and runs all necessary
groff preprocessors, such as chem.
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 ei‐
ther 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 Window viewer
gxditview(1), each Postcript, pdf, 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 manual‐
ly 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 handling is done in GNU style. Options and file names can be
mixed freely. The option `--' closes the option handling, all fol‐
lowing arguments are treated as file names. Long options can be ab‐
breviated in several ways.
breaking options
[-h | --help] [-v | --version]
groffer mode options
[--auto] [--default] [--default-modes mode1,mode2,....]
[--dvi] [--groff] [--html] [--latin1] [--mode display_mode]
[--pdf] [--pdf2] [--ps] [--source] [--text] [--to-stdout]
[--tty] [--utf8] [--viewer prog] [--www] [--x | --X]
options related to groff
[-T | --device device]
[-Z | --intermediate-output | --ditroff]
All further groff short options are accepted.
options for man pages
[--apropos] [--apropos-data] [--apropos-devel]
[--apropos-progs] [--man] [--no-man] [--no-special]
[--whatis]
long options taken over from GNU man
[--all] [--ascii] [--ditroff] [--extension suffix]
[--locale language] [--local-file] [--location | --where]
[--manpath dir1:dir2:....] [--no-location] [--pager program]
[--sections sec1:sec2:....] [--systems sys1,sys2,....]
[--troff-device device]
Further long options of GNU man are accepted as well.
X Window Toolkit options
[--bd | --bordercolor pixels] [--bg | --background color]
[--bw | --borderwidth pixels] [--display X-display]
[--fg | --foreground color] [--fn | --ft | --font font_name]
[--geometry size_pos] [--resolution value] [--rv]
[--title string] [--xrm X-resource]
options for development
[--debug] [--debug-filenames] [--debug-grog] [--debug-keep]
[--debug-params] [--debug-tmpdir] [--do-nothing]
[--print text] [-V]
filespec arguments
The filespec parameters are all arguments that are neither an
option nor an option argument. They usually mean a file name
or a man page searching scheme.
In the following, the term section_extension is used. It
means a word that consists of a man section that is optionally
followed by an extension. The name of a man section is a sin‐
gle character from [1–9on], the extension is some word. The
extension is mostly lacking.
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_extension)
man:name.section_extension
name(section_extension)
name.section_extension
section_extension name
search the man page name in the section with
optional extension section_extension.
man:name man page in the lowest man section that has name.
name if name is not an existing file search for the
man page name in the lowest man section.
The groffer program can usually be run with very few options. But
for special purposes, it supports many options. 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).
Arguments for long option names can be abbreviated in several ways.
First, the argument is checked whether it can be prolonged as is.
Furthermore, each minus sign - is considered as a starting point for
a new abbreviation. This leads to a set of multiple abbreviations
for a single argument. For example, --de-n-f can be used as an
abbreviation for --debug-not-func, but --de-n works as well. If the
abbreviation of the argument leads to several resulting options an
error is raised.
These abbreviations are only allowed in the environment variable
$GROFFER_OPT, but not in the configuration files. In configuration,
all long options must be exact.
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.
-h | --help
Print help information with a short explanation of options to
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 options is specified
groffer tries to find a suitable display mode automatically. The
default modes are mode pdf, mode ps, mode html, mode x, and mode dvi
in X Window with different viewers and mode tty with device utf8
under less on a terminal; other modes are tested if the programs for
the main default mode do not exist.
In X Window, many programs create their own window when called.
groffer can run these viewers as an independent program in the
background. As this does not work in text mode on a terminal (tty)
there must be a way to know which viewers are X Window graphical
programs. The groffer script has a small set of information on some
viewer names. If a viewer argument of the command-line chooses an
element that is kept as X Window program in this list it is treated
as a viewer that can run in the background. All other, unknown
viewer calls are not run in the background.
For each mode, you are free to choose whatever viewer you want. That
need not be some graphical viewer suitable for this mode. There is a
chance to view the output source; for example, the combination of the
options --mode=ps and --viewer=less shows the content of the
Postscript output, the source code, with the pager less.
--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.
--viewer prog
Choose a viewer program for dvi mode. This can be a file name
or a program to be searched in $PATH. Known X Window dvi
viewers include xdvi(1) and dvilx(1). In each case, arguments
can be provided additionally.
--groff
Equivalent to --mode=groff.
--html Equivalent to --mode=html.
--viewer
Choose a web browser program for viewing in html mode. It can
be the path name of an executable file or a program in $PATH.
In each case, arguments can be provided additionally.
--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.
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 Transform roff input files into a PDF file by using the
groff(1) device -Tpdf. This is the default PDF
generator. The generated PDF file is displayed with
suitable viewer programs, such as okular(1).
pdf2 This is the traditional pdf mode. Sometimes this mode
produces more correct output than the default PDF mode.
By default, the input is formatted by groff using the
Postscript device, then it is transformed into the PDF
file format using gs(1), or ps2pdf(1). If that's not
possible, the Postscript mode (ps) is used instead.
Finally it is displayed using different viewer
programs.
ps Display formatted input in a Postscript viewer program.
By default, the formatted input is displayed in one of
many viewer programs.
text Format in a groff text mode and write the result to
standard output without a pager or viewer program. 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 --mode=html.
x Display the formatted input in a native roff viewer.
By default, the formatted input is displayed with the
gxditview(1) program being distributed together with
groff. But the standard X Window tool xditview(1) can
also be chosen with the option --viewer. The default
resolution is 75dpi, but 100dpi are also possible. The
default groff device for the resolution of 75dpi is
X75-12, for 100dpi it is X100. The corresponding groff
intermediate output for the actual device is generated
and the result is displayed. For a resolution of
100dpi, the default width of the geometry of the
display program is chosen to 850dpi.
X Equivalent to --mode=x.
The following modes do not use the groffer viewing features.
They are only interesting for advanced applications.
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 Output the roff source code of the input files without
further processing.
--pdf Equivalent to --mode=pdf.
--pdf2 Equivalent to --mode=pdf2.
--viewer prog
Choose a viewer program for pdf mode. This can be a file name
or a program to be searched in $PATH; arguments can be
provided additionally.
--ps Equivalent to --mode=ps.
--viewer prog
Choose a viewer program for ps mode. This can be a file name
or a program to be searched in $PATH. Common Postscript
viewers include okular(1), evince(1), gv(1), ghostview(1), and
gs(1), In each case, arguments can be provided additionally.
--source
Equivalent to --mode=source.
--text Equivalent to --mode=text.
--to-stdout
The file for the chosen mode is generated and its content is
printed to standard output. It will not be displayed in
graphical mode.
--tty Equivalent to --mode=tty.
--viewer prog
Choose a text pager for mode tty. The standard pager is
less(1). This option is equivalent to man option
--pager=prog. The option argument can be a file name or a
program to be searched in $PATH; arguments can be provided
additionally.
--www Equivalent to --mode=html.
--viewer
prog.
--X | --x
Equivalent to --mode=x.
--viewer prog
Choose a viewer program for x mode. Suitable viewer programs
are gxditview(1) which is the default and xditview(1). The
argument can be any executable file or a program in $PATH;
arguments can be provided additionally.
-- Signals the end of option processing; all remaining arguments
are interpreted as filespec parameters.
Besides these, groffer accepts all short options that are valid for
the groff(1) program. All non-groffer options are sent unmodified
via grog to groff. So postprocessors, macro packages, compatibility
with classical troff, and much more can be manually specified.
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 option -Z
groffer was designed to be switched into groff mode; 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 the
text modes. That could be important when the text pager has
problems with control sequences in tty mode.
--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 devname | --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,
utf8, and others. Each of these arguments 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.
--X is equivalent to groff -X. It displays the groff intermediate
output with gxditview. As the quality is relatively bad this
option is deprecated; use --X instead because the x mode uses
an X* device for a better display.
-Z | --intermediate-output | --ditroff
Switch into groff mode and format the input with the groff
intermediate output without postprocessing; see groff_out(5).
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.
Options for man pages
--apropos
Start the apropos(1) command or facility of man(1) for
searching the filespec arguments within all man page
descriptions. Each filespec argument is taken for search as
it is; section specific parts are not handled, such that 7
groff searches for the two arguments 7 and groff, with a large
result; for the filespec groff.7 nothing will be found. The
language locale is handled only when the called programs do
support this; the GNU apropos and man -k do not. The display
differs from the apropos program by the following concepts:
* Construct a groff frame similar to a man page to the output
of apropos,
* each filespec argument is searched on its own.
* The restriction by --sections is handled as well,
* wildcard characters are allowed and handled without a
further option.
--apropos-data
Show only the apropos descriptions for data documents, these
are the man(7) sections 4, 5, and 7. Direct section
declarations are ignored, wildcards are accepted.
--apropos-devel
Show only the apropos descriptions for development documents,
these are the man(7) sections 2, 3, and 9. Direct section
declarations are ignored, wildcards are accepted.
--apropos-progs
Show only the apropos descriptions for documents on programs,
these are the man(7) sections 1, 6, and 8. Direct section
declarations are ignored, wildcards are accepted.
--whatis
For each filespec argument search all man pages and display
their description — or say that it is not a man page. This is
written from anew, so it differs from man's whatis output by
the following concepts
* each retrieved file name is added,
* local files are handled as well,
* the language and system locale is supported,
* the display is framed by a groff output format similar to a
man page,
* wildcard characters are allowed without a further option.
The following options were added to 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 represent 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.
--no-special
Disable former calls of --all, --apropos*, and --whatis.
Long options taken over from GNU man
The long options of groffer were synchronized with the long options
of GNU man. 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. These ignored man options are --catman, --troff, and --up‐
date.
In the following, the man options that have a special meaning for
groffer are documented.
If your system has GNU man installed the full set of long and short
options of the GNU man program can be passed via the environment
variable $MANOPT; see man(1).
--all In searching man pages, retrieve all suitable documents in‐
stead of only one.
-7 | --ascii
In text modes, display ASCII translation of special characters
for critical environment. This is equivalent to groff
-mtty_char; see groff_tmac(5).
--ditroff
Produce groff intermediate output. This is equivalent to
groffer -Z.
--extension suffix
Restrict man page search to file names that have suffix ap‐
pended to their section element. For example, in the file
name /usr/share/man/man3/terminfo.3ncurses.gz the man page ex‐
tension 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 can
be set with --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 ar‐
gument systems is a comma-separated list.
--where
Equivalent to --location.
X Window Toolkit Options
The following long options were adapted from the corresponding
X Window Toolkit options. groffer will pass them to the actual view‐
er 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 us‐
ing a double minus for long options, for example, groffer uses the
option --font for the X Window option -font.
See X(7) and the documentation on the X Window Toolkit options for
more details on these options and their arguments.
--background color
Set the background color of the viewer window.
--bd pixels
This is equivalent to --bordercolor.
--bg color
This is equivalent to --background.
--bw pixels
This is equivalent to --borderwidth.
--bordercolor pixels
Specifies the color of the border surrounding the viewer win‐
dow.
--borderwidth pixels
Specifies the width in pixels of the border surrounding the
viewer window.
--display X-display
Set the X Window 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.
--fn font_name
This is equivalent to --font.
--font font_name
Set the font used by the viewer window. The argument is an
X Window font name.
--ft font_name
This is equivalent to --font.
--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 ar‐
gument.
--resolution value
Set X Window resolution in dpi (dots per inch) in some viewer
programs. The only supported dpi values are 75 and 100. Ac‐
tually, the default resolution for groffer is set to 75dpi.
The resolution also sets the default device in mode x.
--rv Reverse foreground and background color of the viewer window.
--title 'some text'
Set the title for the viewer window.
--xrm 'resource'
Set X Window resource.
Options for Development
--debug
Enable all debugging options --debug-type. The temporary
files are kept and not deleted, the grog output is printed,
the name of the temporary directory is printed, the displayed
file names are printed, and the parameters are printed.
--debug-filenames
Print the names of the files and man pages that are displayed
by groffer.
--debug-grog
Print the output of all grog commands.
--debug-keep
Enable two debugging informations. Print the name of the tem‐
porary directory and keep the temporary files, do not delete
them during the run of groffer.
--debug-params
Print the parameters, as obtained from the configuration
files, from GROFFER_OPT, and the command line arguments.
--debug-tmpdir
Print the name of the temporary directory.
--do-nothing
This is like --version, but without the output; no viewer is
started. This makes only sense in development.
--print=text
Just print the argument to standard error. This is good for
parameter check.
-V This is an advanced option for debugging only. Instead of
displaying the formatted input, a lot of groffer specific in‐
formation is printed to standard output:
* the output file name in the temporary directory,
* the display mode of the actual groffer run,
* the display program for viewing the output with its argu‐
ments,
* the active parameters from the config files, the arguments
in $GROFFER_OPT, and the arguments of the command line,
* the pipeline that would be run by the groff program, but
without executing it.
Other useful debugging options are the groff option -Z and
--mode=groff.
Filespec Arguments
A filespec parameter is an argument that is not an option or option
argument. In groffer, filespec parameters are a file name or a tem‐
plate for searching man pages. These input sources are collected and
composed into a single output file such as groff does.
The strange POSIX behavior to regard all arguments behind the first
non-option argument as filespec arguments is ignored. The GNU behav‐
ior to recognize options even when mixed with filespec arguments is
used throughout. But, as usual, the double minus argument -- ends
the option handling and interprets all following arguments as
filespec arguments; so the POSIX behavior can be easily adopted.
The options --apropos* have a special handling of filespec arguments.
Each argument is taken as a search scheme of its own. Also a regexp
(regular expression) can be used in the filespec. For example, grof‐
fer --apropos '^gro.f$' searches groff in the man page name, while
groffer --apropos groff searches groff somewhere in the name or de‐
scription of the man pages.
All other parts of groffer, such as the normal display or the output
with --whatis have a different scheme for filespecs. No regular ex‐
pressions are used for the arguments. The filespec arguments are
handled by the following scheme.
It is necessary to know that 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 a digit from 1 to 9 or
one of the characters n or o.
This can optionally be followed by a string, the so-called extension.
The extension allows to store several man pages with the same name in
the same section. But the extension is only rarely used, usually it
is omitted. Then the extensions are searched automatically by alpha‐
bet.
In the following, we use the name section_extension for a word that
consists of a single character section name or a section character
that is followed by an extension. Each filespec parameter can have
one of the following forms in decreasing sequence.
* No filespec parameters means that groffer waits for standard input.
The minus option - always stands for standard input; it can occur
several times. If you want to look up a man page called - use the
argument man:-.
* Next a filespec is tested whether it is the path name of an exist‐
ing file. Otherwise it is assumed to be a searching pattern for a
man page.
* man:name(section_extension), man:name.section_extension,
name(section_extension), or name.section_extension search the
man page name in man section and possibly extension of
section_extension.
* Now man:name searches for a man page in the lowest man section that
has a document called name.
* section_extension name is a pattern of 2 arguments that originates
from a strange argument parsing of the man program. Again, this
searches the man page name with section_extension, a combination of
a section character optionally followed by an extension.
* 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.
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 the option
--viewer.
Several different modes are offered, graphical modes for X Window,
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 testing 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 mostly in the X Window environment
(or similar implementations within other windowing environments).
The environment variable $DISPLAY and the option --display are used
for specifying the X Window display to be used. If this environment
variable is empty groffer assumes that no X Window is running and
changes to a 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 programs are
* in a PDF viewer (pdf mode)
* in a web browser (html or www mode)
* in a Postscript viewer (ps mode)
* X Window roff viewers such as gxditview(1) or xditview(1) (in
x mode)
* in a dvi viewer program (dvi mode)
The pdf mode has a major advantage — it is the only graphical display
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 into 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 modes
There are two modes for text output, mode text for plain output with‐
out 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 cho‐
sen 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 --viewer, or by the environment variable $PAGER. If all of this
is not used the less(1) program with the option -r for correctly dis‐
playing 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 regarded as advanced, they are useful for debugging
and development purposes.
The source mode with option --source just displays the decompressed
input.
Option --to-stdout does not display in a graphical mode. It just
generates the file for the chosen mode and then prints its content to
standard output.
The groff mode passes the input to groff using only some suitable op‐
tions provided to groffer. This enables the user to save the gener‐
ated 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.
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 the name of a man page. The
following options can be used to determine whether the arguments
should be handled as file name or man page arguments.
--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 error, but processing is
continued.
Search Algorithm
Let us now assume that a man page should be searched. 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. The search algorithm shall
determine which file is displayed for a given man page. The process
can be modified by options and environment variables.
The only man action that is omitted in groffer are the preformatted
man pages, also called cat pages. With the excellent performance of
the actual computers, the preformatted man pages aren't necessary any
longer. Additionally, groffer is a roff program; it wants to read
roff source files and format them itself.
The algorithm for retrieving the file for a man page needs first a
set of directories. This set starts with the so-called man path that
is modified later on by adding names of operating system and
language. This arising set is used for adding the section
directories which contain the man page files.
The man path is a list of directories that are separated by colon.
It is generated by the following methods.
* The environment variable $MANPATH can be set.
* It can be read from the arguments of the environment variable
$MANOPT.
* The man path can be manually specified by using the option
--manpath. An empty argument disables the man page searching.
* When no man path was set the manpath(1) program is tried to
determine one.
* If this does not work a reasonable default path from $PATH is
determined.
We now have a starting set of directories. The first way to change
this set is by adding names of operating systems. This assumes that
man pages for several operating systems are installed. This is not
always true. The names of such operating systems can be provided by
3 methods.
* The environment variable $SYSTEM has the lowest precedence.
* This can be overridden by an option in $MANOPT.
* This again is overridden by the command line option --systems.
Several names of operating systems can be given by appending their
names, separated by a comma.
The man path is changed by appending each system name as subdirectory
at the end of each directory of the set. No directory of the
man path set is kept. But if no system name is specified the
man path is left unchanged.
After this, the actual set of directories can be changed by language
information. This assumes that there exist man pages in different
languages. The wanted language can be chosen by several methods.
* Environment variable $LANG.
* This is overridden by $LC_MESSAGES.
* This is overridden by $LC_ALL.
* This can be overridden by providing an option in $MANOPT.
* All these environment variables are overridden by the command line
option --locale.
The default language can be specified by specifying one of the
pseudo-language parameters C or POSIX. This is like deleting a
formerly given language information. The man pages in the default
language are usually in English.
Of course, the language name is determined by man. In GNU man, it is
specified in the POSIX 1003.1 based format:
<language>[_<territory>[.<character-set>[,<version>]]],
but the two-letter code in <language> is sufficient for most purpos‐
es. If for a complicated language formulation no man pages are found
groffer searches the country part consisting of these first two char‐
acters as well.
The actual directory set is copied thrice. The language name is ap‐
pended as subdirectory to each directory in the first copy of the ac‐
tual directory set (this is only done when a language information is
given). Then the 2-letter abbreviation of the language name is ap‐
pended as subdirectories to the second copy of the directory set
(this is only done when the given language name has more than 2 let‐
ters). The third copy of the directory set is kept unchanged (if no
language information is given this is the kept directory set). These
maximally 3 copies are appended to get the new directory set.
We now have a complete set of directories to work with. In each of
these directories, the man files are separated in sections. The name
of a section is represented by a single character, a digit between 1
and 9, or the character o or n, in this order.
For each available section, a subdirectory man<section> exists con‐
taining all man files for this section, where <section> is a single
character as described before. Each man file in a section directory
has the form
man<section>/<name>.<section>[<extension>][.<compression>], where
<extension> and <compression> are optional. <name> is the name of
the man page that is also specified as filespec argument on the com‐
mand line.
The extension is an addition to the section. This postfix acts like
a subsection. An extension occurs only in the file name, not in name
of the section subdirectory. It can be specified on the command
line.
On the other hand, the compression is just an information on how the
file is compressed. This is not important for the user, such that it
cannot be specified on the command line.
There are 4 methods to specify a section on the command line:
* Environment variable $MANSECT
* Command line option --sections
* Appendix to the name argument in the form <name>.<section>
* Preargument before the name argument in the form <section> <name>
It is also possible to specify several sections by appending the sin‐
gle characters separated by colons. One can imagine that this means
to restrict the man page search to only some sections. The multiple
sections are only possible for $MANSECT and --sections.
If no section is specified all sections are searched one after the
other in the given order, starting with section 1, until a suitable
file is found.
There are 4 methods to specify an extension on the command line. But
it is not necessary to provide the whole extension name, some abbre‐
viation is good enough in most cases.
* Environment variable $EXTENSION
* Command line option --extension
* Appendix to the <name>.<section> argument in the form <name>.<sec‐
tion><extension>
* Preargument before the name argument in the form <section><exten‐
sion> <name>
For further details on man page searching, see man(1).
Examples of man files
/usr/share/man/man1/groff.1
This is an uncompressed file for the man page groff in sec‐
tion 1. It can be called by
sh# groffer groff
No section is specified here, so all sections should be
searched, but as section 1 is searched first this file will be
found first. The file name is composed of the following com‐
ponents. /usr/share/man/ must be part of the man path; the
subdirectory man1/ and the part .1 stand for the section;
groff is the name of the man page.
/usr/local/share/man/man7/groff.7.gz
The file name is composed of the following components.
/usr/local/share/man must be part of the man path; the subdi‐
rectory man7/ and the part .7 stand for the section; groff is
the name of the man page; the final part .gz stands for a com‐
pression with gzip(1). As the section is not the first one it
must be specified as well. This can be done by one of the
following commands.
sh# groffer groff.7
sh# groffer 7 groff
sh# groffer --sections=7 groff
/usr/local/man/man1/ctags.1emacs21.bz2
Here /usr/local/man must be in man path; the subdirectory
man1/ and the file name part .1 stand for section 1; the name
of the man page is ctags; the section has an extension
emacs21; and the file is compressed as .bz2 with bzip2(1).
The file can be viewed with one of the following commands
sh# groffer ctags.1e
sh# groffer 1e ctags
sh# groffer --extension=e --sections=1 ctags
where e works as an abbreviation for the extension emacs21.
/usr/man/linux/de/man7/man.7.Z
The directory /usr/man is now part of the man path; then there
is a subdirectory for an operating system name linux/; next
comes a subdirectory de/ for the German language; the section
names man7 and .7 are known so far; man is the name of the
man page; and .Z signifies the compression that can be handled
by gzip(1). We want now show how to provide several values
for some options. That is possible for sections and operating
system names. So we use as sections 5 and 7 and as system
names linux and aix. The command is then
sh# groffer --locale=de --sections=5:7 --systems=linux,aix man
sh# LANG=de MANSECT=5:7 SYSTEM=linux,aix groffer man
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
concatenation of all decompressed input in the sequence that was
specified on the command line.
The groffer program 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 arguments containing white-space or
special shell characters should be quoted. Do not forget to
export this variable, otherwise it does not exist during the
run of groffer.
System Variables
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 carelessly, but it can be used to
start the graphical groffer on a remote X Window 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 typi‐
cally of the form language[_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 en‐
coding 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 script are called without a
fixed path. Thus this environment variable determines the set
of programs used within the run of groffer.
Groff Variables
The groffer program internally calls groff, so all environment vari‐
ables documented in groff(1) are internally used within groffer as
well. The following variable has a direct meaning for the groffer
program.
$GROFF_TMPDIR
If the value of this variable is an existing, writable direc‐
tory, groffer uses it for storing its temporary files, just as
groff does. See the groff(1) man page for more details on the
location of temporary files.
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
provided with $MANOPT, which in turn is overwritten by the command
line.
$EXTENSION
Restrict the search for man pages to files having this exten‐
sion. 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 values of the other environment vari‐
ables that 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 automatically.
The groffer program can be preconfigured by two configuration files.
/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 file is called after
the system-wide configuration file to enable overriding by the
user.
Both files are handled for the configuration, but the configuration
file in /etc comes first; it is overwritten by the configuration file
in the home directory; both configuration files are overwritten by
the environment variable $GROFFER_OPT; everything is overwritten by
the command line arguments.
The configuration files contain options that should be called as
default for every groffer run. These options are written in lines
such that each contains either a long option, a short option, or a
short option cluster; each with or without an argument. So each line
with configuration information starts with a minus character `-'; a
line with a long option starts with two minus characters `--', a line
with a short option or short option cluster starts with a single
minus `-'.
The option names in the configuration files may not be abbreviated,
they must be exact.
The argument for a long option can be separated from the option name
either by an equal sign `=' or by whitespace, i.e. one or several
space or tab characters. An argument for a short option or short
option cluster can be directly appended to the option name or
separated by whitespace. The end of an argument is the end of the
line. It is not allowed to use a shell environment variable in an
option name or argument.
It is not necessary to use quotes in an option or argument, except
for empty arguments. An empty argument can be provided by appending
a pair of quotes to the separating equal sign or whitespace; with a
short option, the separator can be omitted as well. For a long
option with a separating equal sign `=', the pair of quotes can be
omitted, thus ending the line with the separating equal sign. All
other quote characters are cancelled internally.
In the configuration files, arbitrary whitespace is allowed at the
beginning of each line, it is just ignored. Each whitespace within a
line is replaced by a single space character ` ' internally.
All lines of the configuration lines that do not start with a minus
character are ignored, such that comments starting with `#' are
possible. So there are no shell commands in the configuration files.
As an example, consider the following configuration file that can be
used either in /etc/groff/groffer.conf or ~/.groff/groffer.conf .
# groffer configuration file
#
# groffer options that are used in each call of groffer
--foreground=DarkBlue
--resolution=100
--viewer=gxditview -geometry 900x1200
--viewer xpdf -Z 150
The lines starting with # are just ignored, so they act as command
lines. This configuration sets four groffer options (the lines
starting with `-'). This has the following effects:
* Use a text color of DarkBlue in all viewers that support this, such
as gxditview.
* Use a resolution of 100dpi in all viewers that support this, such
as gxditview. By this, the default device in x mode is set to
X100.
* Force gxditview(1) as the x-mode viewer using the geometry option
for setting the width to 900px and the height to 1200px. This ge‐
ometry is suitable for a resolution of 100dpi.
* Use xpdf(1) as the pdf-mode viewer with the argument -Z 150.
The usage of groffer is very easy. Usually, it is just called with a
file name or man page. The following examples, 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/local/share/doc/groff, using the standard viewer
gxditview as graphical viewer when in X Window, or the less(1) pager
program when not in X Window.
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 section 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 extension 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 fol‐
lowing 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 parentheses 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 --viewer=galeon ls
Retrieve the German man page (language de) for the ls program, decom‐
press 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# groffer --de-p --in --ap
This is a set of abbreviated arguments, it is determined as
sh# groffer --debug-params --intermediate-output --apropos
sh# cat file.gz | groffer -Z -mfoo
The file file.gz is sent to standard input, this is decompressed, and
then this is transported to the groff intermediate output mode with‐
out post-processing (groff option -Z), using macro package 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.
The groffer program is written in Perl, the Perl version during
writing was v5.8.8.
groffer provides its own parser for command line arguments that is
compatible to both POSIX getopts(1) and GNU getopt(1). It can handle
option arguments and file names containing white space and a large
set of special characters. The following standard types of options
are supported.
* The option consisting of a single minus - refers to standard input.
* A single minus followed by characters refers to a 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 preceded 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 argument; for example, --long=arg is equivalent
to --long arg.
* An argument of -- ends option parsing; all further command line
arguments are interpreted as filespec parameters, i.e. file names
or constructs for searching man pages).
* All command line arguments that are neither options nor option
arguments are interpreted as filespec parameters and stored until
option parsing has finished. For example, the command line
sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file2
is equivalent to
sh# groffer -a -o arg -- file1 file2
The free mixing of options and filespec parameters follows the GNU
principle. That does not fulfill the strange option behavior of
POSIX that ends option processing as soon as the first non-option
argument has been reached. The end of option processing can be
forced by the option `--' anyway.
Report bugs to the bug-groff mailing list ⟨bug-groff@gnu.org⟩.
Include a complete, self-contained example that will allow the bug to
be reproduced, and say which version of groffer you are using.
You can also use the groff mailing list ⟨groff@gnu.org⟩, but you must
first subscribe to this list. You can do that by visiting the groff
mailing list web page ⟨http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff⟩.
See groff(1) for information on availability.
groff(1), troff(1)
Details on the options and environment variables available in
groff; all of them can be used with groffer.
grog(1)
This program tries to guess the necessary groff command line
options from the input and the groffer options.
groff(7)
Documentation of the groff language.
groff_char(7)
Documentation on the groff characters, special characters, and
glyphs..
groff_tmac(5)
Documentation on the groff macro files.
groff_out(5)
Documentation on the groff intermediate output before the run
of a postprocessor. (ditroff output). This can be run by the
groff or groffer option -Z.
man(1) The standard program to display 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.
kpdf(1)
kghostview(1)
evince(1)
ggv(1)
gv(1)
ghostview(1)
gs(1) Viewers for groffer's ps mode.
kpdf(1)
acroread(1)
evince(1)
xpdf(1)
gpdf(1)
kghostview(1)
ggv(1) Viewers for groffer's pdf mode.
kdvi(1), xdvi(1), dvilx(1)
Viewers for groffer's dvi mode.
konqueror(1)
epiphany(1)
firefox(1)
mozilla(1)
netscape(1)
lynx(1)
Web-browsers for groffer's html or www mode.
less(1)
more(1)
Standard pager program for the tty mode.
gzip(1)
bzip2(1)
xz(1) The decompression programs supported by groffer.
Copyright © 2001-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of groffer, which 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 version 2 as published by the Free Software
Foundation.
The license text is available in the internet at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html⟩.
This file was written by Bernd Warken ⟨groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de⟩.
This page is part of the groff (GNU troff) project. Information
about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩. If you have a bug report for
this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩. This
page was obtained from the tarball groff-1.22.3.tar.gz fetched from
⟨ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/⟩ on 2017-07-05. If you discover any
rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe
there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Groff Version 1.22.3 4 November 2014 GROFFER(1)
Pages that refer to this page: chem(1), glilypond(1), gperl(1), gpinyin(1), groff(1), grog(1), roff2dvi(1), roff2html(1), roff2pdf(1), roff2ps(1), roff2text(1), roff2x(1), groff_trace(7), roff(7)