Manual Pages for UNIX Darwin command on man groffer

GROFFER(1) GROFFER(1)

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

ggrrooffffeerr [option...] [--] [filespec...]

ggrrooffffeerr --aapprrooppooss|--aapprrooppooss-ddaattaa|--aapprrooppooss-ddeevveell|--aapprrooppooss-pprrooggss name

ggrrooffffeerr -hh|--hheellpp

ggrrooffffeerr -vv|--vveerrssiioonn

DESCRIPTION

The groffer program is the easiest way to use ggrrooffff(1). It can display

arbitrary documents written in the ggrrooffff(7) language or other rrooffff(7) languages that are compatible to the original troff language. The

groffer program also includes many of the features for finding and dis-

playing the UNIX manual pages (man pages), such that it can be used as a replacement for a mmaann(1) program. Moreover, compressed files that

can be handled by ggzziipp(1) or bbzziipp22(1) are decompressed on-the-fly.

The normal usage is quite simple by supplying a file name or name of a man page without further options. But the option handling has many

possibilities for creating special behaviors. This can be done in con-

figuration files, with the shell environment variable $$GGRROOFFFFEERROOPPTT, or

on the command line.

The output can be generated and viewed in several different ways avail-

able for groff. This includes the groff native X viewer ggxxddiittvviieeww(1), each Postcript or dvi display program, a web browser by generating html

in www-mode, or several text modes in text terminals.

Most of the options that must be named when running groff directly are

determined automatically for groffer, due to the internal usage of the

ggrroogg(1) program. But all parts can also be controlled manually by ar-

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

[--aapprrooppooss name] [--aapprrooppooss-ddaattaa name] [--aapprrooppooss-ddeevveell name]

[--aapprrooppooss-pprrooggss name] [-hh|--hheellpp] [-vv|--vveerrssiioonn]

groffer mode options

[--aauuttoo] [--ddeeffaauulltt] [--ddeeffaauulltt-mmooddeess mode1,mode2,...] [--ddvvii]

[--ddvvii-vviieewweerr prog] [--ggrrooffff] [--hhttmmll] [--hhttmmll-vviieewweerr prog]

[--mmaann] [--mmooddee displaymode] [--nnoo-mmaann] [--ppddff] [--ppddff-vviieewweerr

prog] [--ppss] [--ppss-vviieewweerr prog] [--tteexxtt] [--ttttyy] [--ttttyy-vviieewweerr

prog] [--wwwwww] [--wwwwww-vviieewweerr prog] [--xx|--XX] [--xx-vviieewweerr|--XX-

vviieewweerr prog] development options

[--ddeebbuugg] [--sshheellll]

options related to groff

[-PP|--ppoossttpprroocc-aarrgg optorarg] [-QQ|--ssoouurrccee] [-TT|--ddeevviiccee

device] [-ZZ|--iinntteerrmmeeddiiaattee-oouuttppuutt|--ddiittrrooffff]

All further groff short options are accepted. X Window toolkit options

[--bbdd pixels] [--bbgg|--bbaacckkggrroouunndd color] [--bbww pixels] [--ddiissppllaayy

X-display] [--ffgg|--ffoorreeggrroouunndd color] [--fftt|--ffoonntt fontname]

[--ggeeoommeettrryy sizepos] [--rreessoolluuttiioonn value] [--rrvv] [--ttiittllee

string] [--xxrrmm Xresource]

options from man

[--aallll] [--aasscciiii] [--ddiittrrooffff] [--eexxtteennssiioonn suffix] [--llooccaallee

language] [--llooccaall-ffiillee] [--mmaannppaatthh dir1:dir2:...] [--ppaaggeerr

program] [--sseeccttiioonnss sec1:sec2:...] [--ssyysstteemmss sys1,sys2,...]

[--ttrrooffff-ddeevviiccee device] [--wwhhaattiiss]

Further long options of GNU man are accepted as well. filespec argument No filespec parameters means standard input.

- stands for standard input (can occur several times).

filename the path name of an existing file. mmaann::name((section)) name((section)) search the man page name in man section section. mmaann::name..s

name..s if s is a character in [[11-99oonn]], search for a man page

name in man section s. mmaann::name man page in the lowest man section that has name.

s name if s is a character in [[11-99oonn]], 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. OOPPTTIIOONN DDEETTAAIILLSS

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

ggrrooffff(1). All long options of groffer are compatible with the long op-

tions of mmaann(1).

groffer breaking Options

As soon as one of these options is found on the command line it is exe-

cuted, printed to standard output, and the running groffer is terminat-

ed thereafter. All other arguments are ignored.

--aapprrooppooss name

Start the aapprrooppooss(1) command for searching within man page de-

scriptions. That slightly differs from the strange behavior of

the --aapprrooppooss program of mmaann(1), which has no argument of its

own, but takes the file arguments instead. Practically both concepts are compatible.

--aapprrooppooss-ddaattaa name

Show only the aapprrooppooss(1) descriptions for data documents, in the mmaann(7) sections 4, 5, and 7.

--aapprrooppooss-ddeevveell name

Show only the aapprrooppooss(1) descriptions for development documents, in the mmaann(7) sections 2, 3, and 9.

--aapprrooppooss-pprrooggss name

Show only the aapprrooppooss(1) descriptions for documents on programs, in the mmaann(7) sections 1, 6, and 8.

-hh | --hheellpp

Print a helping information with a short explanation of option sto standard output.

-vv | --vveerrssiioonn

Print version information to standard output.

groffer Mode Options

The display mode and the viewer programs are determined by these op-

tions. If none of these mode and viewer options is specified groffer

tries to find a suitable display mode automatically.

--aauuttoo Equivalent to --mmooddee==aauuttoo.

--ddeeffaauulltt

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 $$GGRROOFFFFEERROOPPTT, and

restart option processing using only the rest of the command line.

--ddeeffaauulltt-mmooddeess mode1,mode2,...

Set the sequence of modes for auto mode to the comma separated

list given in the argument. See --mmooddee for details on modes.

Display in the default manner; actually, this means to try the modes x, ps, and tty in this sequence.

--ddvvii Equivalent to --mmooddee==ddvvii.

--ddvvii-vviieewweerr prog

Set the viewer program for dvi mode. This can be a file name or

a program to be searched in $$PPAATTHH. Known dvi viewers inlude xxdd-

vvii(1) and ddvviillxx(1) In each case, arguments can be provided addi-

tionally.

--ggrrooffff

Equivalent to --mmooddee==ggrrooffff.

--hhttmmll Equivalent to --mmooddee==hhttmmll.

--hhttmmll-vviieewweerr

Equivalent to --wwwwww-vviieewweerr.

--mmooddee value

Set the display mode. The following mode values are recognized: aauuttoo Select the automatic determination of the display mode. The sequence of modes that are tried can be set with the

--ddeeffaauulltt-mmooddeess option. Useful for restoring the default

mode when a different mode was specified before.

ddvvii Display formatted input in a dvi viewer program. By de-

fault, the formatted input is displayed with the xxddvvii(1)

program. --ddvvii.

ggrrooffff After the file determination, switch groffer to process

the input like ggrrooffff(1) would do . This disables the

groffer viewing features.

hhttmmll Translate the input into html format and display the re-

sult in a web browser program. By default, the existence

of a sequence of standard web browsers is tested, start-

ing with kkoonnqquueerroorr(1) and mmoozziillllaa(1). The text html viewer is llyynnxx(1).

ppddff Display formatted input in a PDF (Portable Document For-

mat) viewer program. By default, the input is formatted

by groff using the Postscript device, then it is trans-

formed into the PDF file format using ggss(1), and finally

displayed either with the xxppddff(1) or the aaccrroorreeaadd(1) pro-

gram. PDF has a big advantage because the text is dis-

played 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. ppss Display formatted input in a Postscript viewer program. By default, the formatted input is displayed with the gghhoossttvviieeww(1) program.

tteexxtt Format in a groff text mode and write the result to stan-

dard output without a pager or viewer program. The text

device, latin1 by default, can be chosen with option -TT.

ttttyy Format in a groff text mode and write the result to stan-

dard output using a text pager program, even when in X Window.

wwwwww Equivalent to --wwwwww.

XX Display formatted input in a native roff viewer. By de-

fault, the formatted input is displayed with the ggxxddiittvviieeww(1) program, being distributed together with groff, or with xxddiittvviieeww(1), which is distributed as a standard X tool.

xx Equivalent to --mmooddee==XX.

The following modes do not use the groffer viewing features.

They are only interesting for advanced applications. ggrrooffff Generate device output with plain groff without using the

special viewing features of groffer. If no device was

specified by option -TT the groff default ppss is assumed.

ssoouurrccee Display the source code of the input without formatting;

equivalent to -QQ.

--ppddff Equivalent to --mmooddee==ppddff.

--ppddff-vviieewweerr prog

Set the viewer program for pdf mode. This can be a file name or

a program to be searched in $$PPAATTHH. In each case, arguments can

be provided additionally.

--ppss Equivalent to --mmooddee==ppss.

--ppss-vviieewweerr prog

Set the viewer program for ps mode. This can be a file name or

a program to be searched in $$PPAATTHH. Common Postscript viewers

inlude ggvv(1), gghhoossttvviieeww(1), and ggss(1), In each case, arguments can be provided additionally.

--tteexxtt Equivalent to --mmooddee==tteexxtt.

--ttttyy Equivalent to --mmooddee==ttttyy.

--ttttyy-vviieewweerr

Choose tty display mode, that means displaying in a text pager

even when in X; eqivalent to --mmooddee==ttttyy.

--wwwwww Equivalent to --mmooddee==wwwwww.

--wwwwww-vviieewweerr prog

Set the web browser program for viewing in www mode. Each pro-

gram that accepts html input and allows the ffiillee::////llooccaall-

hhoosstt//dir//file syntax on the command line is suitable as viewer

program; it can be the path name of an executable file or a pro-

gram in $$PPAATTHH. In each case, arguments can be provided addi-

tionally.

-XX | --XX | --xx

Equivalent to --mmooddee==XX.

--XX-vviieewweerr | --xx-vviieewweerr prog

Set the viewer program for x mode. Suitable viewer programs are

ggxxddiittvviieeww(1) and xxddiittvviieeww(1). But the argument can be any exe-

cutable file or a program in $$PPAATTHH. In each case, arguments can

be provided additionally.

-- Signals the end of option processing; all remaining arguments

are interpreted as filespec parameters.

Besides these, groffer accepts all arguments that are valid for the

ggrrooffff(1) program. All non-groffer options are sent unmodified via grog

to groff. Postprocessors, macro packages, compatibility with classical troff, and much more can be manually specified. Options for Development

--ddeebbuugg

Print debugging information for development only. Actually, a function call stack is printed if an error occurs.

--sshheellll shellprogram

Specify the shell under which the groffer script should be run.

The script first tests whether this option is set (either by

configuration, within $$GGRROOFFFFOOPPTT or as a command line option);

if so, the script is rerun under the shell program specified with the option argument.

-QQ | --ssoouurrccee

Output the roff source code of the input files without further

processing. This is the equivalent --mmooddee==ssoouurrccee.

Other useful debugging options are the groff options -VV and -ZZ and op-

tion --mmooddee==ggrrooffff.

Options related to groff

All short options of groffer are compatible with the short options of

ggrrooffff(1). The following of groff options have either an additional

special meaning within groffer or make sense for normal usage.

Because of the special outputting behavior of the groff options -VV and

-ZZ groffer was designed to be switched into groff mode by these; the

groffer viewing features are disabled there. The other groff options

do not switch the mode, but allow to customize the formatting process.

-aa This generates an ascii approximation of output in text modes.

That could be important when the text pager has problems with control sequences.

-mm file

Add file as a groff macro file. This is useful in case it can-

not be recognized automatically.

-PP optorarg

Send the argument optorarg as an option or option argument to the actual groff postprocessor.

-TT | --ddeevviiccee devname

This option determines groff's output device. The most impor-

tant devices are the text output devices for referring to the

different character sets, such as aasscciiii, uuttff88, llaattiinn11, 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 corre-

sponding groffer --mmooddee==devname option: ddvvii, hhttmmll, and ppss. All

XX** arguments are mapped to mode XX. Each other devname argument switches to mode groff using this device.

-VV Switch into groff mode and show only the groff calling pipe

without formatting the input. This an advanced option from ggrrooffff(1),, only useful for debugging.

-XX was made equivalent to --mmooddee==xx; this slightly enhances the fa-

cility of groff's option.

-ZZ | --iinntteerrmmeeddiiaattee-oouuttppuutt | --ddiittrrooffff

Switch into groff mode and format the input with groff interme-

diate output without postprocessing; see ggrrooffffoouutt(1). This is

equivalent to option --ddiittrrooffff 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 document-

ed here, but in ggrrooffff(1). Due to the automatism in groffer, none of

these groff options should be needed, except for advanced usage. X Window toolkit Options

The following long options were adapted from the corresponding X Tool-

kit options. groffer will pass them to the actual viewer program if it

is an X Window program. Otherwise these options are ignored. Unfortunately these options use the old style of a single minus for

long options. For groffer that was changed to the standard with using

a double minus for long options, for example, groffer uses the option

--ffoonntt for the X option -ffoonntt.

See XX(1), XX(7), and the documentation on the X toolkit options for more details on these options and their arguments.

--bbaacckkggrroouunndd color

Set the background color of the viewer window.

--bbdd pixels

Specifies the color of the border surrounding the viewer window.

--bbgg color

This is equivalent to --bbaacckkggrroouunndd.

--bbww pixels

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

--ddiissppllaayy X-display

Set the X display on which the viewer program shall be started, see the X Window documentation for the syntax of the argument.

--ffoorreeggrroouunndd color

Set the foreground color of the viewer window.

--ffgg color

This is equivalent to -ffoorreeggrroouunndd.

--ffoonntt fontname

Set the font used by the viewer window. The argument is an X font name.

--fftt fontname

This is equivalent to --fftt.

--ggeeoommeettrryy sizepos

Set the geometry of the display window, that means its size and its starting position. See XX(7) for the syntax of the argument.

--rreessoolluuttiioonn value

Set X resolution in dpi (dots per inch) in some viewer programs.

The only supported dpi values are 7755 and 110000. Actually, the de-

fault resolution for groffer is set to 7755.

--rrvv Reverse foreground and background color of the viewer window.

--ttiittllee 'some text'

Set the title for the viewer window.

--xxrrmm 'resource'

Set X resource. Options from man

The long options of groffer were synchronized with the long options of

GNUman. 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.

The following two options were added by 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.

--mmaann 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.

--nnoo-mmaann | --llooccaall-ffiillee

Do not check for man pages. --llooccaall-ffiillee is the corresponding

man option.

In the following, the man options that have a special meaning for grof-

fer are documented. The full set of long and short options of the GNU man program can be

passed via the environment variable $$MMAANNOOPPTT; see mmaann(1) if your system

has GNU man installed.

--aallll In searching man pages, retrieve all suitable documents instead

of only one.

-77 | --aasscciiii

In text modes, display ASCII translation of special characters.

--ddiittrrooffff

Eqivalent to groffer -ZZ.

--eexxtteennssiioonn 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.

--llooccaallee language

Set the language for man pages. This has the same effect, but

overwrites $$LLAANNGG

--llooccaattiioonn

Print the location of the retrieved files to standard error.

--nnoo-llooccaattiioonn

Do not display the location of retrieved files; this resets a

former call to --llooccaattiioonn. This was added by groffer.

--mmaannppaatthh '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.

--ppaaggeerr

Set the pager program in tty mode; default is less. This is

equivalent to --ttttyy-vviieewweerr.

--sseeccttiioonnss 'sec1:sec2:...'

Restrict searching for man pages to the given sections, a colon-

separated list.

--ssyysstteemmss 'sys1,sys2,...'

Search for man pages for the given operating systems; the argu-

ment systems is a comma-separated list.

--wwhhaattiiss

Instead of displaying the content, get the one-liner description

from the retrieved man page files - or say that it is not a

man page.

--wwhheerree

Eqivalent to --llooccaattiioonn.

Additionally, the following short option of man is supported as well. FFiilleessppeecc AArrgguummeennttss A filespec parameter is an argument meaning an input source, such as a file name or template for searching man pages. These input sources are

collected and composed into a single output file. Each of these file-

spec parameters can have one of the following forms.

No filespec parameters means that groffer waits for standard input.

The minus option - stands for standard input, too, but can occur sever-

al times. Next filespec is tested whether it is the path name of an existing file. Otherwise it is assumed as a searching pattern for a man page.

On each system, the man pages are sorted according to their content in-

to several sections. The classical man sections have a single-charac-

ter name, either are a digit from 11 to 99 or one of the characters nn or

oo. In the following, a stand-alone character s means this scheme.

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 ex-

tended by a following string. But the special groffer man page facili-

ty is based on the classical single character sections. mmaann::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.

Next some patterns based on the classical man sections were construct-

ed. mmaann::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 search for a man page named name.s in the lowest man section. Now mmaann::name searches for a man page in the lowest man section that has a document called name. 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 s as a file argument and name as another filespec argument. 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. OOUUTTPPUUTT MMOODDEESS

By default, the groffer program collects all input into a single file,

formats it with the groff program for a certain device, and then choos-

es 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 --mmooddee==anymode. Ad-

ditionally, 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 X modes, text modes, and some direct groff modes for debugging and development.

By default, groffer first tries whether xx mode is possible, then ppss

mode, and finally ttttyy mode. This mode testing sequence for aauuttoo mode can be changed by specifying a comma separated list of modes with the

option --ddeeffaauulltt-mmooddeess..

The searching for man pages and the decompression of the input are ac-

tive in every mode. GGrraapphhiiccaall DDiissppllaayy MMooddeess The graphical display modes work only in the X Window environment (or

similar implementations within other windowing environments). The en-

vironment variable $$DDIISSPPLLAAYY and the option --ddiissppllaayy are used for spec-

ifying the X display to be used. If neither is given, groffer assumes

that no X and changes to one text mode. You can change this automatic

behavior by the option --ddeeffaauulltt-mmooddeess.

Known viewers for the graphical display modes and their standard X Win-

dow viewer progams are +o X Window roff viewers such as ggxxddiittvviieeww(1) or xxddiittvviieeww(1) (inx or 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 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

Toolkit. But the groffer options use a leading double minus instead of

the single minus used by the X Window Toolkit. TTeexxtt mmooddee There are to 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 $$DDIISSPPLLAAYY 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 -TT or

--ddeevviiccee.

The pager to be used can be specified by one of the options --ppaaggeerr and

--ttttyy-vviieewweerr, or by the environment variable $$PPAAGGEERR. If all of this is

not used the lleessss(1) program with the option -rr for correctly display-

ing control sequences is used as the default pager. SSppeecciiaall MMooddeess ffoorr DDeebbuuggggiinngg aanndd DDeevveellooppmmeenntt

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 de-

velopment purposes. The source mode with just displays the generated 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 -ZZ disables post-processing, thus producing

the groff intermediate output. In this mode, the input is formatted, but not postprocessed; see ggrrooffffoouutt(5) for details.

All groff short options are supported by groffer.

MMAANN PPAAGGEE SSEEAARRCCHHIINNGG

The default behavior of groffer is to first test whether a file parame-

ter 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 modi-

fied by the following options.

--mmaann forces to interpret all file parameters as filespecs for search-

ing man pages.

--nnoo-mmaann

--llooccaall-ffiillee

disable the man searching; so only local files are displayed.

If neither a local file nor a man page was retrieved for some file pa-

rameter 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 mmaann(1) program were implemented. This inludes the extended

file names of man pages, for example, the man page of groff in man sec-

tion 7 may be stored under //uussrr//sshhaarree//mmaann//mmaann77//ggrrooffff..77..ggzz, where //uussrr//sshhaarree//mmaann// is part of the man path, the subdirectory man7 and the file extension .7 refer to the man section 7; .gz shows the compression of the file. The cat pages (preformatted man pages) are intentionally excluded from

the search because groffer is a roff program that wants to format by

its own. With the excellent performance of the actual computers, the preformatted man pages aren't necessary any longer. The algorithm for retrieving man pages uses five search methods. They are successively tried until a method works. +o The search path can be manually specified by using the option

--mmaannppaatthh. An empty argument disables the man page searching. This

overwrites the other methods.

+o If this is not available the environment variable $$MMAANNPPAATTHH is

searched. +o If this is empty, the program tries to read it from the environment

variable $$MMAANNOOPPTT.

+o If this does not work a reasonable default path from $$PPAATTHH is

searched for man pages. +o If this does not work, the mmaannppaatthh(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 environ-

ment variables and command line options.

The locale (language) is determined like in GNU man, that is from high-

est to lowest precedence:

+o --llooccaallee

+o $$GGRROOFFFFEERROOPPTT

+o $$MMAANNOOPPTT

+o $$LLCCAALLLL

+o $$LLCCMMEESSSSAAGGEESS

+o $$LLAANNGG.

The language locale is usually specified in the POSIX 1003.1 based for-

mat:

[[..[,,]]],

but the two-letter code in 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 En-

glish.

Several operating systems can be given by appending their names, sepa-

rated by a comma. This is then specified by the environment variable

$$SSYYSSTTEEMM or by the command line option --ssyysstteemmss. The precedence is

similar to the locale case above from highest to lowest precedence:

Topic --ssyysstteemmss

+o $$GGRROOFFFFEERROOPPTT

+o $$MMAANNOOPPTT

+o $$SSYYSSTTEEMM.

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 sec-

tions. A single section can be specified within each filespec argu-

ment, several sections as a colon-separated list in command line option

--sseeccttiioonnss or environment variable $$MMAANNSSEECCTT. When no section was spec-

ified 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

--eexxtteennssiioonn or environment variable $$EEXXTTEENNSSIIOONN.

For further details on man page searching, see mmaann(1). DDEECCOOMMPPRREESSSSIIOONN 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 ggzziipp(1) or bbzziipp22(1) it is decom-

pressed on-the-fly. This includes the GNU ..ggzz, ..bbzz22, and the tradi-

tional ..ZZ compression. The program displays the concatenation of all decompressed input in the sequence that was specified on the command line. ENVIRONMENT

The groffer programs supports many system variables, most of them by

courtesy of other programs. All environment variables of ggrrooffff(1) and GNU mmaann(1) and some standard system variables are honored. NNaattiivvee ggrrooffffeerr VVaarriiaabblleess

$$GGRROOFFFFEERROOPPTT

Store options for a run of groffer. The options specified in

this variable are overridden by the options given on the command line. The content of this variable is run through the shell

builtin `eval'; so arguments containing white-space or special

shell characters should be quoted. SSyysstteemm VVaarriiaabblleess

The groffer program is a shell script that is run through //bbiinn//sshh,

which can be internally linked to programs like bbaasshh(1). The corre-

sponding system environment is automatically effective. The following

variables have a special meaning for groffer.

$$DDIISSPPLLAAYY

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 terminal. For example, depend-

ing on your system, groffer can be started on the second monitor

by the command

sh# DISPLAY=:0.1 groffer what.ever&

$$LLCCAALLLL

$$LLCCMMEESSSSAAGGEESS

$$LLAANNGG If one of these variables is set (in the above sequence), its

content is interpreted as the locale, the language to be used,

especially when retrieving man pages. A locale name is typical-

ly 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 identi-

fier like ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8; see sseettllooccaallee(3). The locale

values CC and PPOOSSIIXX stand for the default, i.e. the man page di-

rectories without a language prefix. This is the same behavior as when all 3 variables are unset.

$$PPAAGGEERR 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 ccaatt(1) program

sh# PAGER=cat groffer anything

$$PPAATTHH 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.

$$PPOOSSIIXXLLYYCCOORRRREECCTT

If set to a non-empty value this chooses the POSIX mode for op-

tion processing, that means that option processing will be fin-

ished as soon as a non-option argument is found. Usually, you

do not want to set this environment variable. GGrrooffff VVaarriiaabblleess

The groffer program internally calls groff, so all environment vari-

ables documented in ggrrooffff(1) are internally used within groffer as

well. The following variables have a direct meaning for the groffer

program.

$$GGRROOFFFFTTMMPPDDIIRR

If the value of this variable is an existing, writable directo-

ry, groffer uses it for storing its temporary files, just as

groff does. MMaann VVaarriiaabblleess

Parts of the functionality of the man program were implemented in grof-

fer; support for all environment variables documented in mmaann(1) was

added to groffer, but the meaning was slightly modified due to the dif-

ferent approach in groffer; but the user interface is the same. The

man environment variables can be overwritten by options provided with

$$MMAANNOOPPTT, which in turn is overwritten by the command line.

$$EEXXTTEENNSSIIOONN

Restrict the search for man pages to files having this exten-

sion. This is overridden by option --eexxtteennssiioonn; see there for

details.

$$MMAANNOOPPTT

This variable contains options as a preset for mmaann(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

taht are specific to man. All options specified in this vari-

able are overridden by the options given on the command line.

$$MMAANNPPAATTHH

If set, this variable contains the directories in which the man page trees are stored. This is overridden by option

--mmaannppaatthh.

$$MMAANNSSEECCTT

If this is a colon separated list of section names, the search

for man pages is restricted to those manual sections in that or-

der. This is overridden by option --sseeccttiioonnss.

$$SSYYSSTTEEMM

If this is set to a comma separated list of names these are in-

terpreted as man page trees for different operating systems.

This variable can be overwritten by option --ssyysstteemmss; see there

for details.

The environment variable $$MMAANNRROOFFFFSSEEQQ is ignored by groffer because the

necessary preprocessors are determined automatically. CONFIGURATION FILES

The groffer program can be preconfigured by two configuration files.

This configuration can be overridden at each program start by command

line options or by the environment variable $$GGRROOFFFFEERROOPPTT.

//eettcc//ggrrooffff//ggrrooffffeerr..ccoonnff

System-wide configuration file for groffer.

$$HHOOMMEE//..ggrrooffff//ggrrooffffeerr..ccoonnff

User-specific configuration file for groffer, where $$HHOOMMEE de-

notes the user's home directory. This script is called after

the system-wide configuration file to enable overriding by the

user. Their lines either start with a minus character or are shell commands. Arbitrary spaces are allowed at the beginning, they are just ignored. The lines with the beginning minus are appended to the existing value

of $GROFFEROPT. This easily allows to set general groffer options

that are used with any call of groffer.

After the transformation of the minus lines the emerging shell scripts

that are called by groffer using the `.. filename' syntax.

It makes sense to use these configuration files for the following tasks: +o Preset command line options by writing them into lines starting with a minus sign.

+o Preset environment variables recognized by groffer.

+o Write a function for calling a viewer program for a special mode and

feed this name into its corresponding --mode-vviieewweerr option. Note

that the name of such a function must coincide with some existing

program in the system path $$PPAATTHH in order to be recognized by grof-

fer. 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

-resolution=100

-foreground=DarkBlue

-x-viewer 'gxditview -geometry 850x800'

# some shell commands

if test "$DISPLAY" = ""; then

DISPLAY='localhost:0.0' fi

date >>~/mygroffer.log

This configuration sets three groffer options and runs two shell com-

mands. This has the following effects:

+o Lines starting with a ## character are

+o Use a resolution of 110000 ddppii and a text color of DDaarrkkBBlluuee in all view-

ers that support this.

+o Force ggxxddiittvviieeww(1) as the X-mode viewer using the geometry option for

setting the width to 885500 ddppii and the height to 880000 ddppii.

+o The variable $$DDIISSPPLLAAYY is set to localhost:0.0 which allows to start

groffer in the standard X display, even when the program is called

from a text console.

+o Just for fun, the date of each groffer start is written to the file

mmyyggrrooffffeerr..lloogg in the home directory. EEXXAAMMPPLLEESS

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 gxditview as graphical viewer when in X Window, or the lleessss(1) pager program when not in X.

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 secion 1 in this case.

sh# groffer man:groff

search for the man page of groff even when the file ./groff ex-

ists.

sh# groffer groff.7

sh# groffer 7 groff

search the man page of groff in man section 77. 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 paranthesis are spe-

cial shell characters; escaping them with a backslash character

$ and $ would be possible, too. The formatted files are con-

catenated and displayed in one piece.

sh# LANG=de groffer -man -www -www-viever=mozilla ls

Retrieve the German man page (language de) for the llss program, decompress it, format it to html format (www mode) and view the

result in the web browser galeon . The option --mmaann 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

mode without post-processing (groff option -ZZ), using macro

package by foo (groff option -mm)

sh# echo '\f[CB]WOW!' |

> groffer -x -bg red -fg yellow -geometry 200x100 -

Display the word WWOOWW!! in a small window in constant-width bold

font, using color yellow on red background. CCOOMMPPAATTIIBBIILLIITTYY The ggrrooffffeerr shell script is compatible with both GNU and POSIX. POSIX compatibility refers to IIEEEEEE PP11000033..22//DD1111..22 of September 1991, a very early version of the POSIX standard that is still freely available in the internet. Unfortunately, this version of the standard has `local' for shell function variables removed. As `local' is needed for serious programming this temporary POSIX deprecation was ignored. Most GNU shells are compatible with this interpretation of POSIX, but

provide much more facilities. Nevertheless this script uses only a re-

stricted set of shell language elements and shell builtins, such that it can be run on `ash', a GNU shell that is quite fast, but has a

slightly limited shell language. The groffer script should work on

most actual free and commercial operating systems.

The groffer program provides its own parser for command line options;

it can handle option arguments and file names containing white space and a large set of special characters.

The groffer shell script was tested with the following common implemen-

tations of the GNU shells: aasshh(1), POSIX sshh(1), bbaasshh(1), and others. Free POSIX compatible shells and shell utilities for most operating systems are available at the GGNNUU ssooffttwwaarree aarrcchhiivvee .

The best performance was obtained with the ash shell; so groffer tries

to run under ash whenever possible. If ash is not available the shell under which the script was started in the first place is used instead.

This can be modified by the option --sshheellll.

The groffer program provides its own parser for command line arguments

that is compatible to both POSIX ggeettooppttss(1) and GNU ggeettoopptt(1) except for shortcuts of long options. The following standard types of options are supported.

+o A single minus always refers to single character option or a combina-

tion thereof, for example, the groffer short option combination

-QQmmffoooo is equivalent to -QQ -mm ffoooo.

+o Long options are options with names longer than one character; they are always prededed by a double minus. An option argument can either go to the next command line argument or be appended with an equal

sign to the argument; for example, --lloonngg==aarrgg is equivalent to

--lloonngg aarrgg .

+o An argument of -- ends option parsing; all further command line argu-

ments are interpreted as file name arguments. +o By default, all command line arguments that are neither options nor option arguments are interpreted as filespec parameters and stored until option parsing has finished. For example, the command line

sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file2

is, by default, equivalent to

sh# groffer -a -o arg - file1 file2

This behavior can be changed by setting the environment variable

$$PPOOSSIIXXLLYYCCOORRRREECCTT to a non-empty value. Then the strange POSIX non-op-

tion behavior is adopted, i. e. option processing is stopped as soon as

the first non-option argument is found and each following argument is

taken as a file name. For example, in posixly correct mode, the com-

mand line

sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file 2

is equivalent to

sh# groffer - file1 -a -o arg file 2

As this leads to unwanted behavior in most cases, most people do not

want to set $$PPOOSSIIXXLLYYCCOORRRREECCTT.

groff; all of them can be used with groffer.

mmaann(1) The standard program to diplay man pages. The information there

is only useful if it is the man page for GNU man. Then it docu-

ments the options and environment variables that are supported

by groffer.

ggxxddiittvviieeww(1) xxddiittvviieeww(1x)

Viewers for groffer's x mode.

ggvv(1) gghhoossttvviieeww(1)

Viewers for groffer's ps mode.

ggss(1) Transformer from ps to pdf; and a ps viewer. xxppddff(1) Viewers for pdf files. xxddvvii(1) ddvviillxx(1)

Viewers for groffer's dvi mode.

lleessss(1) Standard pager program for the tty mode. ggzziipp(1) bbzziipp22(1)

The decompression programs supported by groffer.

ggrrooffff(7) Documentation of the groff language. ggrroogg(1)

Internally, groffer tries to guess the groff command line op-

This document is distributed under the terms of the FDL (GNU Free Docu-

mentation License) version 1.1 or later. You should have received a

copy of the FDL on your system, it is also available on-line at the GGNNUU

ccooppyylleefftt ssiittee . This document is part of groff, the GNU roff distribution. It was written by Bernd Warken. Groff Version 1.19.1 3 May 2004 GROFFER(1)