Macro packages come in two varieties; those which assume
responsibility for page layout and other critical functions
('major' or 'full-service') and those which do not
('supplemental' or 'auxiliary'). GNU roff provides most major
macro packages found in AT&T and BSD Unix systems, an additional
full-service package, and many supplemental packages. Multiple
full-service macro packages cannot be used by the same document.
Auxiliary packages can generally be freely combined, though
attention to their use of the groff language name spaces for
identifiers (particularly registers, macros, strings, and
diversions) should be paid. Name space management was a
significant challenge in AT&T troff; groff's support for
arbitrarily long identifiers affords few excuses for name
collisions, apart from attempts at compatibility with the demands
of historical documents.
Man pages
an
man an is used to compose man pages in the format originating
in Version 7 Unix (1979). It has a small macro interface
and is widely used; see groff_man(7).
doc
mdoc doc is used to compose man pages in the format originating
in 4.3BSD-Reno (1990). It provides many more features
than an, but is also larger, more complex, and not as
widely adopted; see groff_mdoc(7).
Because readers of man pages often do not know in advance which
macros are used to format a given document, a wrapper is
available.
andoc
mandoc This macro file, specific to groff, recognizes whether a
document uses man or mdoc format and loads the
corresponding macro package. Multiple man pages, in
either format, can be handled; andoc reloads each macro
package as necessary.
Full-service packages
The packages in this section provide a complete set of macros for
writing documents of any kind, up to whole books. They are
similar in functionality; it is a matter of taste which one to
use.
me The classical me macro package; see groff_me(7).
mm The semi-classical mm macro package; see groff_mm(7).
mom The mom macro package, only available in groff. As this
was not based on other packages, it was freely designed as
quite a nice, modern macro package. See groff_mom(7).
ms The classical ms macro package; see groff_ms(7).
Localization packages
For Western languages, the localization file sets the hyphenation
mode and loads hyphenation patterns and exceptions. Localization
files can also adjust the date format and provide translations of
strings used by some of the full-service macro packages; alter
the input encoding (see the next section); and change the amount
of inter-sentence space. By default, troffrc loads the
localization file for English.
As of groff 1.23.0, the following localization files exist.
cs Czech; localizes me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input
encoding to Latin-2 by loading latin2.tmac.
de
den German; localizes me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input
encoding to Latin-1 by loading latin1.tmac.
de.tmac selects hyphenation patterns for traditional
orthography, and den.tmac does the same for the new
orthography ('Rechtschreibreform').
en English.
fr French; localizes me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input
encoding to Latin-9 by loading latin9.tmac.
it Italian; localizes me, mm, mom, and ms.
ja Japanese.
sv Swedish; localizes me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input
encoding to Latin-1 by loading latin1.tmac. Some of the
localization of the mm package is handled separately; see
groff_mmse(7).
zh Chinese.
Input encodings
latin1
latin2
latin5
latin9 Various input encodings supported directly by groff.
Normally, this macro is loaded at the very beginning of a
document or specified as the first macro argument on the
command line. groff loads latin1 by default at start-up.
These macro packages don't work on EBCDIC hosts.
cp1047 Encoding support for EBCDIC. On those platforms it is
loaded automatically at start-up. Due to different
character ranges used in groff it doesn't work on
architectures which are based on ASCII.
Some input encoding characters may not be available for a
particular output device. For example, saying
groff -Tlatin1 -mlatin9 ...
fails if you use the Euro character in the input. Usually, this
limitation is present only for drivers which have a limited set
of output glyphs (ascii, latin1); for other drivers it is usually
sufficient to install proper fonts which contain the necessary
glyphs.
Auxiliary packages
The macro packages in this section are not intended for stand-
alone use, but can add functionality to any other macro package
or to plain (or 'raw') groff documents.
62bit Provides macros for addition, multiplication, and division
of 62-bit integers (allowing safe multiplication of 31-bit
integers, for example).
ec Switch to the EC and TC font families. To be used with
grodvi(1) — this man page also gives more details of how
to use it.
hdtbl The Heidelberger table macros, contributed by Joachim
Walsdorff, allow the generation of tables through a syntax
similar to the HTML table model. Note that hdtbl is a
macro package, not a preprocessor like tbl(1). hdtbl
works only with the ps and pdf output drivers. See
groff_hdtbl(7).
papersize
This macro file is normally loaded at start-up by the
troffrc file. It provides an interface to set the paper
size on the command line with the option -d paper=size or
troff. Possible values for size are the ISO and DIN
formats 'A0–A6', 'B0–B6', 'C0–C6', and 'D0–D6'; the U.S.
formats 'letter', 'legal', 'tabloid', 'ledger',
'statement', and 'executive'; and the envelope formats
'com10', 'monarch', and 'DL'. All formats, even those for
envelopes, are in portrait orientation, with their longer
dimension as the length. Appending 'l' (ell) to any of
these denotes landscape orientation instead. An output
device typically requires command-line options -p and -l
to override the paper dimensions and orientation,
respectively, defined in its DESC file; see subsection
'Paper sizes' of groff(1).
pdfpic A single macro is provided in this file, PDFPIC, to
include a PDF graphic in a document, i.e., under the
output driver pdf. For all other drivers, pspic is used.
So pdfpic is an extension of pspic. This means you can
safely replace all PSPIC with PDFPIC; nothing gets lost by
that. The options of PDFPIC are identical to the PSDIF
options.
pic This file provides proper definitions for the macros PS
and PE, needed for the pic(1) preprocessor. They center
each picture. Use it only if your macro package doesn't
provide proper definitions for those two macros (most of
them already do).
pspic A single macro is provided in this file, PSPIC, to include
a PostScript graphic in a document. The ps, dvi, html,
and xhtml output drivers support inclusion of PS images;
for all other drivers the image is replaced with a hollow
rectangle of the same size. This macro file is
automatically loaded at start-up by troff so it isn't
necessary to call it explicitly.
Syntax:
.PSPIC [-L|-R|-C|-I n] file [width [height]]
file is the name of the PostScript file; width and height
give the desired width and height of the image. If
neither a width nor a height argument is specified, the
image's natural width (as given in the file's bounding
box) or the current line length is used as the width,
whatever is smaller. The width and height arguments may
have scaling indicators attached; the default scaling
indicator is i. This macro scales the graphic uniformly
in the x and y directions so that it is no more than width
wide and height high. Option -C centers the graphic
horizontally, which is the default. The -L and -R options
left-align and right-align the graphic, respectively. The
-I option indents the graphic by n (default scaling
indicator is m).
For use of .PSPIC within a diversion it is recommended to
extend it with the following code, assuring that the
diversion's width completely covers the image's width.
.am PSPIC
. vpt 0
\h'(\\n[ps-offset]u + \\n[ps-deswid]u)'
. sp -1
. vpt 1
..
ptx A single macro is provided in this file, xx, for
formatting permuted index entries as produced by the GNU
ptx(1) program. If you need different formatting, copy
the macro into your document and adapt it to your needs.
rfc1345
defines special character escape sequences based on the
glyph mnemonics specified in RFC 1345 and the digraph
table of the text editor Vim. See groff_rfc1345(7).
trace Use this for tracing macro calls. It is only useful for
debugging. See groff_trace(7).
tty-char
Defines fallback definitions of roff special characters
for terminal devices. These definitions more poorly
optically approximate typeset output compared to those of
the tty file in favor of communicating more semantic
information, which can allow easier processing with
critical equipment.
www Additions of elements known from the HTML format, as used
in World Wide Web pages; this includes URL links and mail
addresses. See groff_www(7).
