GROFFER(1) General Commands Manual GROFFER(1)
NAME
groffer - display groff files and man pages on X and tty
SYNOPSIS
groffer [option...] [--] [filespec...]
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 language, see groff(7), or
other roff languages, see roff(7), that are compatible to the original troff language. The groffer program also includes many of the fea-
tures for finding and displaying the Unix manual pages (man pages), such that it can be used as a replacement for a man(1) program. More-
over, 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 either 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 ter-
minals.
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 handling is done in GNU style. Options and file names can be mixed freely. The option `--' closes the option handling, all follow-
ing arguments are treated as file names. Long options can be abbreviated.
OPTION OVERVIEW
breaking options
[-h|--help] [-v|--version]
groffer mode options
[--auto] [--default] [--default-modes mode1,mode2,...] [--dvi] [--dvi-viewer prog] [--dvi-viewer-tty prog] [--groff] [--html]
[--html-viewer prog] [--html-viewer-tty prog] [--mode display_mode] [--pdf] [--pdf-viewer prog] [--pdf-viewer-tty prog] [--ps]
[--ps-viewer prog] [--ps-viewer-tty prog] [--text] [--tty] [--tty-viewer prog] [--tty-viewer-tty prog] [--www] [--www-viewer prog]
[--www-viewer- prog] [--x|--X] [--x-viewer|--X-viewer prog] [--x-viewer-tty|--X-viewer-tty prog]
development options
[--debug] [--do-nothing] [--shell prog] [-Q|--source] [-V]
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] [--whatis] [--man] [--no-man] [--no-special]
long options taken over from GNU man
[--all] [--ascii] [--ditroff] [--extension suffix] [--locale language] [--local-file] [--manpath dir1:dir2:...] [--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 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]
filespec arguments
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 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
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 termi-
nated thereafter. All other arguments are ignored.
-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 options is specified groffer
tries to find a suitable display mode automatically. The default modes are mode x with gxditview in X Window and mode tty with device
latin1 under less on a terminal.
There are two kinds of options for viewers. --mode-viewer chooses the normal viewer programs that run on their own in X Window, while
--mode-viewer-tty chooses programs that run on the terminal (on tty). Most graphical viewers are programs running in X Window, so there
aren't many opportunities to call the tty viewers. But they give the chance to view the output source; for example, --ps-viewer-tty=less
shows the content of the Postscript output with the pager less.
The X Window viewers are not critical, you can use both --*-viewer and --*-viewer-tty for them; with --*-viewer-tty the viewer program will
not become independently, it just stays coupled with groffer. But the program will not run if you specify a terminal program with
--*-viewer because this viewer will stay in background without a chance to reach it. So you really need --*-viewer-tty for viewers that
run on tty.
--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. Dis-
play 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
Choose an X Window 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.
--dvi-viewer-tty prog
Choose a program running on the terminal for viewing the output of dvi mode. This can be a file name or a program to be searched in
$PATH; arguments can be provided additionally.
--groff
Equivalent to --mode=groff.
--html Equivalent to --mode=html.
--html-viewer
Choose an X Window 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.
--html-viewer-tty
Choose a terminal program for viewing the output of html mode . It can be the path name of an executable file or a program in
$PATH; 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.
--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 se-
quence 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 us-
ing 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 displayed with the ghostview(1)
program.
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) pro-
gram being distributed together with groff. But the standard X Window tool xditview(1) can also be chosen with the option
--x-viewer. The default resolution is 75 dpi, but 100 dpi are also possible. The default groff device for the resolution of
75 dpi is X75-12, for 100 dpi it is X100. The corresponding groff intermediate output for the actual device is generated and
the result is displayed. For a resolution of 100 dpi, the default width of the geometry of the display program is chosen to
850 dpi.
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 Display the source code of the input without formatting; equivalent to -Q.
--pdf Equivalent to --mode=pdf.
--pdf-viewer prog
Choose an X Window viewer program for pdf mode. This can be a file name or a program to be searched in $PATH; arguments can be pro-
vided additionally.
--pdf-viewer-tty prog
Choose a terminal viewer program for pdf mode. This can be a file name or a program to be searched in $PATH; arguments can be pro-
vided additionally.
--ps Equivalent to --mode=ps.
--ps-viewer prog
Choose an X Window 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 additionally.
--ps-viewer-tty prog
Choose a terminal viewer program for ps mode. This can be a file name or a program to be searched in $PATH; arguments can be pro-
vided additionally.
--text Equivalent to --mode=text.
--tty Equivalent to --mode=tty.
--tty-viewer prog
Choose a text pager for mode tty. The standard pager is less(1). This option is eqivalent 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.
--tty-viewer-tty prog
This is equivalent to --tty-viewer because the programs for tty mode run on a terminal anyway.
--www Equivalent to --mode=html.
--www-viewer prog
Equivalent to --html-viewer.
--www-viewer-tty prog
Equivalent to --html-viewer-tty.
--X | --x
Equivalent to --mode=x.
--X-viewer | --x-viewer prog
Choose an X Window 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.
--X-viewer-tty | --x-viewer-tty prog
Choose a terminal viewer program for x mode. The argument can be any executable file or a program in $PATH; arguments can be pro-
vided 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 for Development
--debug
Enable five debugging informations. The temporary files are kept and not deleted, the name of the temporary directory and the shell
name for groffer2.sh are printed, the parameters are printed at several steps of development, and a function stack is output with
function error_user() as well. Neither the function call stack that is printed at each opening and closing of a function call nor
the landmark information that is printed to determine how far the program is running are used. This seems to be the most useful
among all debugging options.
--debug-all
Enable all seven debugging informations including the function call stack and the landmark information.
--debug-keep
Enable two debugging information, the printing of the name of the temporary directory and the keeping of the temporary files.
--debug-lm
Enable one debugging information, the landmark information.
--debug-params
Enable one debugging information, the parameters at several steps.
--debug-shell
Enable one debugging information, the shell name for groffer2.sh.
--debug-stacks
Enable one debugging information, the function call stack.
--debug-tmpdir
Enable one debugging information, the name of the temporary directory.
--debug-user
Enable one debugging information, the function stack with error_user().
--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.
--shell shell_program
Specify the shell under which the groffer2.sh script should be run. This option overwrites the automatic shell determination of the
program. If the argument shell_program is empty a former shell option and the automatic shell determination is cancelled and the
default shell is restored. Some shells run considerably faster than the standard shell.
-Q | --source
Output the roff source code of the input files without further processing. This is the equivalent --mode=source.
-V This is an advanced option for debugging only. Instead of displaying the formatted input, a lot of groffer specific information is
printed to standard output:
o the output file name in the temporary directory,
o the display mode of the actual groffer run,
o the display program for viewing the output with its arguments,
o the active parameters from the config files, the arguments in $GROFFER_OPT, and the arguments of the command line,
o 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.
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 | --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 arguments switches groffer into a text mode using this de-
vice, 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 op-
tions 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 argu-
ments 7 and groff with a large result; for the filespec groff.7 nothing will be found. The display differs from the apropos program
by the following concepts:
o construct a groff frame to the output of apropos,
o each filespec argument is searched on its own.
o the restriction by --sections is handled as well,
o 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 declara-
tions 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 declara-
tions 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 differs
from man's whatis output by the following concepts
o each retrieved file name is added,
o local files are handled as well,
o the display is framed by a groff output format,
o wildcard characters are allowed without a further option.
The following two 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.
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 for critical environment. This is equivalent to groff -mtty_char;
see groff_tmac(5).
--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.
--where
Eqivalent 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 viewer pro-
gram 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 Window option -font.
See X(1), 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
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 Window display on which the viewer program shall be started, see the X Window documentation for the syntax of the argu-
ment.
--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 Window 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 Window 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 dpi. 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.
Filespec Arguments
A filespec parameter is an argument that is not an option or option argument. It means an input source. In groffer, filespec parameters
are a file name or a 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 to regard all arguments behind the first non-option argument as 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 -- ends the op-
tion handling and interprets all following arguments as filespec arguments; so the POSIX behavior can be easily adopted.
For the following, 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. In the following, a
stand-alone character s stands for a classical man section. 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 following string. But the special groffer man page facility is based on the classical single character sections.
Each filespec parameter can have one of the following forms in decreasing sequence.
o No filespec parameters means that groffer waits for standard input. The minus option - stands for standard input, too; it can occur sev-
eral times.
o Next a filespec is tested whether it is the path name of an existing file. Otherwise it is assumed to be a searching pattern for a
man page.
o 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.
o Next some patterns based on the classical man sections are checked. 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 a man page named name.s is searched in the lowest man section .
o Now man:name searches for a man page in the lowest man section that has a document called name.
o The pattern s name originates from a strange argument parsing of the man program. If s is a classical man section interpret it as a
search for a man page called name in man section s, otherwise interpret both s and name as two independent filespec arguments.
o 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.
Wildcards in filespec arguments are only accepted for --apropos* and --whatis; for normal display, they are interpreted as characters.
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 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 vari-
able 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 progams are
o X Window roff viewers such as gxditview(1) or xditview(1) (in x mode),
o in a Postscript viewer (ps mode),
o in a dvi viewer program (dvi mode),
o in a PDF viewer (pdf mode),
o 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 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 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 variable $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 regarded as advanced, they are useful for debugging
and development purposes.
The source mode with option -Q and --source just displays the decompressed 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 error, but processing is con-
tinued.
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 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 I man pages uses five search methods. They are successively tried until a method works.
o The search path can be manually specified by using the option --manpath. An empty argument disables the man page searching. This over-
writes the other methods.
o If this is not available the environment variable $MANPATH is searched.
o If this is empty, the program tries to read it from the environment variable $MANOPT.
o If this does not work a reasonable default path from $PATH is searched for man pages.
o 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:
o --locale
o $GROFFER_OPT
o $MANOPT
o $LCALL
o $LC_MESSAGES
o $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 (without 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 locale case above from highest to lowest precedence:
Topic --systems
o $GROFFER_OPT
o $MANOPT
o $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 within each filespec argument,
several sections as a colon-separated list in command line option --sections or environment variable $MANSECT. When no section was speci-
fied 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 tra-
ditional .Z compression. The program displays the concatenation of all decompressed input in the sequence that was specified on the com-
mand line.
ENVIRONMENT
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 charac-
ters should be quoted. Do not forget to export this variable, otherwise it does not exist during the run of groffer.
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 corre-
sponding 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 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, espe-
cially when retrieving IR man pages . A locale name is typically 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 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 vari-
able 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 variable determines the set of
programs used within the run of groffer.
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 variable has 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 temporary 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 provided 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 values of the other environment variables that are spe-
cific 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.
CONFIGURATION FILES
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.
The precedence of option delivery is given in the following. The configuration file in /etc has the lowest precedence; it is overwritten
by the configuration file in the home directory; both configuration files are overwritten by the environment variable $GROFFER_OPT; every-
thing is overwritten by the command line.
In the configuration files, arbitrary spaces are allowed at the beginning of each line, they are just ignored. Apart from that, the lines
of the configuration lines either start with a minus character, all other lines are interpreted as shell commands.
The lines with the beginning minus are interpreted as groffer options. This easily allows to set general groffer options that should be
used with any call of groffer. Each line can represent a single short option, a short option cluster, or a long option with two minus
signs, eventually with an argument. The argument can be appended either after a space character or an equal sign `='. The argument can be
surrounded by quotes, but this is not necessary. The options from these lines are collected and prepended to the existing value of
$GROFFER_OPT at the end of each configuration file.
After the transformation of the minus lines, the configuration files have been transferred into a shell script that is called within
groffer using the `. filename' shell syntax.
It makes sense to use these configuration files for the following tasks:
o Preset command line options, such as choosing a mode or a viewer. These are written into lines starting with a single or double minus
sign, followed by the option name.
o Preset environment variables recognized by groffer; but do not forget to export them.
o You can also write a shell function for calling, for example a viewer program for some mode. Such a function can be fed into a corre-
sponding --mode-viewer option.
o Enter --shell to specify a shell for the run of groffer2.sh. Some shells run much faster than the standard shell.
As an example, consider the following configuration file in ~/.groff/groffer.conf, say.
# groffer configuration file
#
# groffer options that are used in each call of groffer
--shell=ksh
--foreground=DarkBlue
--resolution=100
--x-viewer='gxditview -geometry 900x1200'
#
# some shell commands
if test "$DISPLAY" = ""; then
export DISPLAY='localhost:0.0'
fi
date >>~/mygroffer.log
The lines starting with # are command lines. This configuration sets four groffer options (the lines starting with `-') and runs two shell
commands (the rest of the script). This has the following effects:
o Use ksh as the shell to run the groffer script; if it works it should be faster than the usual sh.
o Use a text color of DarkBlue in all viewers that support this, such as gxditview.
o Use a resolution of 100 dpi in all viewers that support this, such as gxditview. By this, the default device in x mode is set to X100.
o Force gxditview(1) as the x-mode viewer using the geometry option for setting the width to 900 dpi and the height to 1200 dpi. This ge-
ometry is suitable for a resolution of 100 dpi.
o If the environment variable $DISPLAY is empty set it to localhost:0.0. That allows to start groffer in the standard X Window display,
even when the program is called from a text console.
o 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 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 small-
est 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 sin-
gle 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=galeon ls
Retrieve the German man page (language de) for the ls program, decompress it, format it to html format (www mode) and view the re-
sult 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 output 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 program consists of two shell scripts.
The starting script is the file groffer that is installed in a bin directory. It is generated from the source file groffer.sh. It is just
a short starting script without any functions such that it can run on very poor shells.
The main part of the groffer program is the file groffer2.sh that is installed in the groff library directory. This script can be run un-
der a different shell by using the groffer option --shell.
Both scripts are compatible with both GNU and POSIX. POSIX compatibility refers to IEEE P1003.2/D11.2 of September 1991, a very early ver-
sion of the POSIX standard that is still freely available in the internet at POSIX P1003.2 draft 11.2 <http://www.funet.fi/pub/doc/posix/
p1003.2/d11.2/all>.
Only a restricted set of shell language elements and shell builtins is used to achieve even compatibility with some Bourne shells that are
not fully POSIX compatible. The groffer shell scripts were tested on many shells, including the following Bourne shells: ash(1), bash(1),
dash(1), ksh(1), pdksh(1), posh(1), and zsh(1). So it should work on most actual free and commercial operating systems.
The shell for the run of groffer2.sh can be chosen by the option --shell on the command line or the environment variable $GROFF_OPT. If
you want to add it to one of the groffer configuration files you must write 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). 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.
o The option consisiting of a single minus - refers to standard input.
o 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.
o 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 .
o An argument of -- ends option parsing; all further command line arguments are interpreted as filespec parameters, i.e. file names or con-
structs for searching man pages).
o 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.
BUGS
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.
SEE ALSO
groff(1), troff(1)
Details on the options and environment variables available in groff; all of them can be used with 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).
groff_tmac(5)
Documentation on the groff macro files.
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 docu-
ments the options and environment variables that are supported by groffer.
ash(1), bash(1), dash(1), ksh(1), pdksh(1), posh(1), sh(1), zsh(1)
Bourne shells that were tested with groffer.
gxditview(1), xditview(1x)
Viewers for groffer's x mode.
kghostview(1), ggv(1), gv(1), ghostview(1), gs(1)
Viewers for groffer's ps mode.
kghostview(1), ggv(1), xpdf(1), acroread(1), kpdf(1)
Viewers for groffer's pdf mode.
kdvi(1), xdvi(1), dvilx(1)
Viewers for groffer's dvi mode.
konqueror(1), mozilla(1), lynx(1)
Web-browsers for groffer's html or www mode.
less(1)
Standard pager program for the tty mode .
gzip(1), bzip2(1)
The decompression programs supported by groffer.
AUTHOR
This file was written by Bernd Warken.
COPYING
Copyright (C) 2001,2002,2004,2005 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 as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with groff, see the files COPYING and LICENSE 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, 51 Franklin St - Fifth
Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
Groff Version 1.19.2 22 August 2005 GROFFER(1)