Ubuntu Manpage: groffer - display groff files and man pages on X and tty

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

       groffer [mode-option ...] [groff-option ...] [man-option ...] [X-option ...] [--] [filespec ...]

       groffer -h
       groffer --help

       groffer -v
       groffer --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. 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 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
X Window System-based groff program gxditview(1), each PostScript, PDF, or DVI display program, a web
browser by generating HTML or XHTML in www mode, or several text modes in text terminals.

Most of the options that must be named when running groff directly are determined automatically for
groffer, due to the internal usage of the grog(1) program. But all parts can also be controlled manually
by arguments.

Several file names can be specified on the command-line arguments. They are transformed into a single
document in the normal way of groff.

Option handling is done in GNU style. Options and file names can be mixed freely. The option “--” clos‐
es the option handling, all following arguments are treated as file names. Long options can be abbrevi‐
ated in several ways.

OPTION OVERVIEW

       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] [--xhtml] [--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.

       options mapped to X Window System Toolkit Intrinsics 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 sec‐
              tion that is optionally followed by an extension.  The name of a man section is a single 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.

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).

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 abbrevia‐
tion 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 configura‐
tion 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 xhtml, mode x, and mode dvi in the X Window System with dif‐
ferent viewers and mode tty with device utf8 under less on a terminal; other modes are tested if the pro‐
grams for the main default mode do not exist.

In the X Window System, 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 System-based graphical programs. The groffer
script has a small amount of information on some viewer names. If a viewer argument of the command-line
chooses an element that is recognized as an X Window System-based program in this list, it is treated as
a viewer that can run in the background. Unrecognized viewers 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. Known DVI viewers for the X Window System include xdvi(1) and dvilx(1).

--groff
Equivalent to --mode=groff.

--html Equivalent to --mode=html.

--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 dis‐
played 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). 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 pro‐
grams, 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 de‐
vice, 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 dif‐
ferent 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 pro‐
gram, even when in the X Window System.

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
legacy X Window System application 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 in‐
termediate 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.

xhtml Translate the input into XHTML format, which is an XML version of HTML. Then display the
result in a web browser program, mostly the known HTML viewers.

The following modes do not use the groffer viewing features. They are only interesting for ad‐
vanced 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.

--ps Equivalent to --mode=ps. 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. 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; argu‐
ments can be provided additionally.

--viewer prog
Choose a viewer program for actual device or mode. This can be a file name or a program to be
searched in $PATH; arguments can be provided additionally.

--www Equivalent to --mode=html.

--X | --x
Equivalent to --mode=x. Suitable viewer programs are gxditview(1) which is the default and
xditview(1).

-- Signals the end of option processing; all remaining arguments are interpreted as filespec parame‐
ters.

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, compati‐
bility 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 in‐
to 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 de‐
vices for referring to the different character sets, such as ascii, utf8, latin1, utf8, and oth‐
ers. 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 correspond‐
ing groffer --mode=devname option: dvi, html, xhtml, 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 postpro‐
cessing; 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 follow‐
ing 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 ig‐
nored. These ignored man options are --catman, --troff, and --update.

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 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
Produce groff intermediate output. This is equivalent 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 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 argument systems is a comma-separated
list.

--where
Equivalent to --location.

X Window System Toolkit Intrinsics Options
The following long options were adapted from the corresponding X Window System Toolkit Intrinsics op‐
tions. groffer will pass them to the actual viewer program if it is an X Window System program. Other‐
wise 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 System Toolkit Intrinsics option -font.

See X(7) and the manual X Toolkit Intrinsics – C Language Interface 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 window.

--borderwidth pixels
Specifies the width in pixels of the border surrounding the viewer window.

--display X-display
Set the X Window System display on which the viewer program shall be started. See section “Dis‐
play Names” in X(7) 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 System 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 sec‐
tion “Geometry Specifications” in X(7) for the syntax of the argument.

--resolution value
Set X Window System 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 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 the X Window System server resource to the given value.

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 temporary directory and keep the tempo‐
rary 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 information 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 arguments,

* 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 para‐
meters are a file name or a template for searching man pages. These input sources are collected and com‐
posed 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 argu‐
ments is ignored. The GNU behavior 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 fol‐
lowing 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, groffer
--apropos '^gro.f$' searches groff in the man page name, while groffer --apropos groff searches groff
somewhere in the name or description 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 expressions 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 sev‐
eral 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 the storage
of several man pages with the same name in the same section. But the extension is only rarely used; usu‐
ally it is omitted. Then the extensions are searched automatically by alphabet.

In the following, we use the name section_extension for a word that consists of a single character sec‐
tion 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 ar‐
gument man:-.

* 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.

* 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.

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 the option --viewer.

Several different modes are offered: graphical modes for the X Window System, 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 System environment (or similar implementations
within other windowing environments). The environment variable DISPLAY and the option --display are used
for specifying the X Window System display to be used. If this environment variable is empty, groffer
assumes that the X Window System is not running and changes to a text mode. You can change this automat‐
ic behavior by the option --default-modes.

Known viewers for the graphical display modes and their standard X Window System viewer programs are

* in a PDF viewer (pdf mode)

* in a web browser (html, (xhtml, or www mode)

* in a PostScript viewer (ps mode)

* X Window System 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 searching for text
within the viewer; this can be a really important feature. Unfortunately, it takes some time to trans‐
form 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 System Toolkit Intrinsics. But the
groffer options use a leading double minus instead of the single minus used by the X Window System Toolk‐
it Intrinsics.

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 --viewer, or by the environment
variable PAGER. If all of this is not used the less(1) program with the option -r for correctly display‐
ing 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 options provided to groffer. This en‐
ables 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 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 stan‐
dard 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 it‐
self.

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 oper‐
ating systems. This assumes that man pages for several operating systems are installed. This is not al‐
ways 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 purposes. 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 appended as subdirectory to each direc‐
tory in the first copy of the actual directory set (this is only done when a language information is giv‐
en). Then the 2-letter abbreviation of the language name is appended as subdirectories to the second
copy of the directory set (this is only done when the given language name has more than 2 letters). 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 containing 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 command
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 im‐
portant 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 single characters separated by colons.
One can imagine that this means to restrict the man page search to only some sections. The multiple sec‐
tions 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 abbreviation is good enough in most cases.

* Environment variable EXTENSION

* Command line option --extension

* Appendix to the <name>.<section> argument in the form <name>.<section><extension>

* Preargument before the name argument in the form <section><extension> <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 section 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 components.
/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 subdirectory man7/ and the part .7 stand for the section; groff is the name of the
man page; the final part .gz stands for a compression 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 com‐
mands
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

DECOMPRESSION

       The  program  has a decompression facility.  If standard input or a file that was retrieved from the com‐
       mand 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 pro‐
       gram 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 en‐
vironment 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 whitespace 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 set, this variable indicates that the X Window System is running. Testing this variable de‐
cides 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 System
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 lo‐
cale, the language to be used, especially when retrieving 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 vari‐
ables 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 variables documented in groff(1) are in‐
ternally used within groffer as well. The following variable has a direct meaning for the groffer pro‐
gram.

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. 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 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 vari‐
able overwrite the values of the other environment variables that are specific to man. All op‐
tions 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 dif‐
ferent operating systems. This variable can be overwritten by option --systems; see there for de‐
tails.

The environment variable MANROFFSEQ is ignored by groffer because the necessary preprocessors are deter‐
mined 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.

Both files are handled for the configuration, but the configuration file in /etc comes first; it is over‐
written 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 op‐
tion 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 argu‐
ment.

It is not necessary to use quotes in an option or argument, except for empty arguments. An empty argu‐
ment 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 ig‐
nored. 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 com‐
ments 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

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 geometry is suitable for a resolution of 100dpi.

* Use xpdf(1) as the pdf-mode viewer with the argument -Z 150.

EXAMPLES

The usage of groffer is very easy. Usually, it is just called with a file name or man page. The follow‐
ing 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/lo‐
cal/share/doc/groff, using the standard viewer gxditview as graphical viewer when in the X Window System,
or the less(1) pager program otherwise.

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 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 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, decompress it, format it to html or xhtml
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 without post-processing (groff option -Z), using macro package foo (groff
option -m).

sh# echo '\f(CBWOW!' |
> 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 back‐
ground.

COMPATIBILITY

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 mi‐
nus. 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.

AUTHORS

       groffer was written by Bernd Warken.