groffer - display groff files and man~pages on X and tty

groffer.1 - man page for groffer (section 1).

Source file position: <groff_source_top>/contrib/groffer/groffer.man Installed position: $prefix/share/man/man1/groffer.1

Last update : 12 May 2004

Source file position: <groff-source>/contrib/groffer/groffer.man [option...] [filespec[Ellipsis]]

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.

breaking options

groffer mode options

development options

options related to groff

All further groff short options are accepted.

X Window toolkit options

options from man

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~c 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.

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).

groffer breaking Options

groffer Mode Options

Print debugging information for development only. Actually, a function call stack is printed if an error occurs. Specify the shell under which the groffer script should be run. The script first tests whether this option is set (either by configuration, within or as a command line option); if so, the script is rerun under the shell program specified with the option argument. Output the roff source code of the input files without further processing. This is the equivalent

Other useful debugging options are the groff options and and option

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 and groffer was designed to be switched into 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. This generates an ascii approximation of output in text modes. That could be important when the text pager has problems with control sequences. Add file as a groff macro file. This is useful in case it cannot be recognized automatically. Send the argument opt_or_arg as an option or option argument to the actual groff postprocessor. 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 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 option: dvi, html, and ps. All X* arguments are mapped to mode X. Each other devname argument switches to mode groff using this device. Switch into groff mode and show only the groff calling pipe without formatting the input. This an advanced option from groff(1), only useful for debugging. was made equivalent to this slightly enhances the facility of groff's option. Switch into groff mode and format the input with groff intermediate output without postprocessing; see groff_out(1). This is equivalent to option 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

Options from man

Filespec Arguments

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 Additionally, each of this argument can be specified as an option of its own, such as Most of these modes have a viewer program, which can be chosen by an option that is constructed like

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 testing sequence for auto mode can be changed by specifying a comma separated list of modes with the option

The searching for man~pages and the decompression of the input are active in every mode.

Graphical Display Modes

Text mode

Special Modes for Debugging and Development

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.

forces to interpret all file parameters as filespecs for searching man~pages.

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.

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 where 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 program 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 An empty argument disables the man~page searching. This overwrites the other methods. If this is not available the environment variable is searched. If this is empty, the program tries to read it from the environment variable If this does not work a reasonable default path from 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 determined from both environment variables and command line options.

The locale (language) is determined like in GNU man, that is from highest to lowest precedence:

The language locale is usually specified in the POSIX 1003.1 based format:

I]<language>][CB]_]I]<territory>][CB].] I]<character-set>][CB],]I]<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 (without the `CB]_]', `CB].]', and `CB],]', 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 CR]C] or CR]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 or by the command line option The precedence is similar to the locale case above from highest to lowest precedence: Topic

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 within each filespec argument, several sections as a colon-separated list in command line option or environment variable 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 or environment variable

For further details on man~page searching, see man(1).

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 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

System Variables

Groff Variables

Man Variables

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

System-wide configuration file for groffer.

User-specific configuration file for groffer, where 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 beginning, they are just ignored. The lines with the beginning minus are appended to the existing value of $GROFFER_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 `c filename' syntax.

The only option that needs a minus line in the configuration files is 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 option. Note that the name of such a function must coincide with some existing program in the system 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 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.

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.

Decompress, format and display the compressed file meintro.ms.gz in the directory /usr/local/share/doc/groff, using gxditview as graphical viewer when in X Window, or the less(1) pager program when not in X.

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.

search for the man~page of groff even when the file ./groff exists.

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.

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.

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 [cq]troff(1)[cq] are necessary because the paranthesis are special shell characters; escaping them with a backslash character [rs]( and [rs]) would be possible, too. The formatted files are concatenated and displayed in one piece.

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 guarantees that the man~page is retrieved, even when a local file ls exists in the actual directory.

Get the man~page called roff in man~section 7, decompress it, and print its unformatted content, its source code.

Decompress the standard input, send this to groff intermediate mode without post-processing (groff option using macro package by foo (groff option

Display the word CB]WOW!] in a small window in constant-width bold font, using color yellow on red background.

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

The shell can be chosen by the option This option can also be given to the environment variable If you want to write it to one of the groffer configuration files you must use the single option style, a line starting with

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 is equivalent to 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 argument; for example, is equivalent to An argument of ends option parsing; all further command line arguments are interpreted as file name arguments. By default, 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 is, by default, equivalent to

This behavior can be changed by setting the environment variable 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 is equivalent to As this leads to unwanted behavior in most cases, most people do not want to set

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).