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GROFF_TMAC(5) GROFF_TMAC(5)
NAME
groff_tmac - macro files in the roff typesetting system
DESCRIPTION
The roff(7) type-setting system provides a set of macro packages suitable for spe-
cial kinds of documents. Each macro package stores its macros and definitions in a
file called the package’s tmac file. The name is deduced from ‘TroffMACros’.
The tmac files are normal roff source documents, except that they usually contain
only definitions and setup commands, but no text. All tmac files are kept in a
single or a small number of directories, the tmac directories.
GROFF MACRO PACKAGES
groff provides all classical macro packages, some more full packages, and some sec-
ondary packages for special purposes.
Man Pages
man This is the classical macro package for UNIX manual pages (man pages); it is
quite handy and easy to use; see groff_man(7).
doc
mdoc An alternative macro package for man pages mainly used in BSD systems; it
provides many new features, but it is not the standard for man pages; see
groff_mdoc(7).
Full 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 new mom macro package, only available in groff. As this is not based on
other packages, it can be freely designed. So it is expected to become
quite a nice, modern macro package. See groff_mom(7).
ms The classical ms macro package; see groff_ms(7).
Special Packages
The macro packages in this section are not intended for stand-alone usage, but can
be used to add special functionality to any other macro package or to plain groff.
tty-char
Overrides the definition of standard troff characters and some groff charac-
ters for tty devices. The optical appearance is intentionally inferior com-
pared to that of normal tty formatting to allow processing with critical
equipment.
www Additions of elements known from the html format, as being used in the
internet (World Wide Web) pages; this includes URL links and mail addresses;
see groff_www(7).
NAMING
In classical roff systems, there was a funny naming scheme for macro packages, due
to a simplistic design in option parsing. Macro packages were always included by
option -m; when this option was directly followed by its argument without an inter-
vening space, this looked like a long option preceded by a single minus — a sensa-
tion in the computer stone age. To make this optically working for macro package
names, all classical macro packages choose a name that started with the letter ‘m’,
which was omitted in the naming of the macro file.
For example, the macro package for the man pages was called man, while its macro
file tmac.an. So it could be activated by the argument an to option -m, or -man
for short.
For similar reasons, macro packages that did not start with an ‘m’ had a leading
‘m’ added in the documentation and in talking; for example, the package correspond-
ing to tmac.doc was called mdoc in the documentation, although a more suitable name
would be doc. For, when omitting the space between the option and its argument,
the command line option for activating this package reads -mdoc.
To cope with all situations, actual versions of groff(1) are smart about both nam-
ing schemes by providing two macro files for the inflicted macro packages; one with
a leading ‘m’, the other one without it. So in groff, the man macro package may be
specified as on of the following four methods:
sh# groff -m man
sh# groff -man
sh# groff -mman
sh# groff -m an
Recent packages that do not start with ‘m’ do not use an additional ‘m’ in the doc-
umentation. For example, the www macro package may be specified only as one of the
two methods:
sh# groff -m www
sh# groff -mwww
Obviously, variants like -mmwww would not make much sense.
A second strange feature of classical troff was to name macro files according to
tmac.name. In modern operating systems, the type of a file is specified as post-
fix, the file name extension. Again, groff copes with this situation by searching
both anything.tmac and tmac.anything if only anything is specified.
The easiest way to find out which macro packages are available on a system is to
check the man page groff(1), or the contents of the tmac directories.
In groff, most macro packages are described in man pages called groff_name(7), with
a leading ‘m’ for the classical packages.
INCLUSION
There are several ways to use a macro package in a document. The classical way is
to specify the troff/groff option -m name at run-time; this makes the contents of
the macro package name available. In groff, the file name.tmac is searched within
the tmac path; if not found, tmac.name will be searched for instead.
Alternatively, it is also possible to include a macro file by adding the request
.so filename into the document; the argument must be the full file name of an ex-
isting file, possibly with the directory where it is kept. In groff, this was im-
proved by the similar request .mso package, which added searching in the tmac path,
just like option -m does.
Note that in order to resolve the .so and .mso requests, the roff preprocessor soe-
lim(1) must be called if the files to be included need preprocessing. This can be
done either directly by a pipeline on the command line or by using the troff/groff
option -s. man calls soelim automatically.
For example, suppose a macro file is stored as
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/tmac/macros.tmac and is used in some document called
docu.roff.
At run-time, the formatter call for this is
sh# groff -m macrofile document.roff
To include the macro file directly in the document either
.mso macrofile.tmac
is used or
.so /usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/tmac/macros.tmac
In both cases, the formatter is called with
sh# troff -s docu.roff
If you want to write your own groff macro file, call it whatever.tmac and put it in
some directory of the tmac path, see section FILES. Then documents can include it
with the .mso request or the option -m.
WRITING MACROS
A roff(7) document is a text file that is enriched by predefined formatting con-
structs, such as requests, escape sequences, strings, numeric registers, and macros
from a macro package. These elements are described in roff(7).
To give a document a personal style, it is most useful to extend the existing ele-
ments by defining some macros for repeating tasks; the best place for this is near
the beginning of the document or in a separate file.
Macros without arguments are just like strings. But the full power of macros re-
veals when arguments are passed with a macro call. Within the macro definition,
the arguments are available as the escape sequences $1, ..., $9, $[...], $*, and
$@, the name under which the macro was called is in $0, and the number of arguments
is in register 0; see groff(7).
Copy-in Mode
The phase when groff reads a macro is called copy-in mode in roff-talk. This is
comparable to the C preprocessing phase during the development of a program written
in the C language.
In this phase, groff interprets all backslashes; that means that all escape se-
quences in the macro body are interpreted and replaced by their value. For con-
stant expression, this is wanted, but strings and registers that might change be-
tween calls of the macro must be protected from being evaluated. This is most eas-
ily done by doubling the backslash that introduces the escape sequence. This dou-
bling is most important for the positional parameters. For example, to print in-
formation on the arguments that were passed to the macro to the terminal, define a
macro named ‘.print_args’, say.
.ds midpart was called with
.de print_args
. tm \f[I]\\$0\f[] \\*[midpart] \\n[.$] arguments:
. tm \\$*
..
When calling this macro by
.print_args arg1 arg2
the following text is printed to the terminal:
print_args was called with the following 2 arguments:
arg1 arg2
Let’s analyze each backslash in the macro definition. As the positional parameters
and the number of arguments will change with each call of the macro their leading
backslash must be doubled, which results in \\$* and \\[.$]. The same applies to
the macro name because it could be called with an alias name, so \\$0.
On the other hand, midpart is a constant string, it will not change, so no doubling
for \*[midpart]. The \f escape sequences are predefined groff elements for setting
the font within the text. Of course, this behavior will not change, so no doubling
with \f[I] and \f[].
Draft Mode
Writing groff macros is easy when the escaping mechanism is temporarily disabled.
In groff, this is done by enclosing the macro definition(s) into a pair of .eo and
.ec requests. Then the body in the macro definition is just like a normal part of
the document — text enhanced by calls of requests, macros, strings, registers, etc.
For example, the code above can be written in a simpler way by
.eo
.ds midpart was called with
.de print_args
. tm \f[I]\$0\f[] \*[midpart] \n[.$] arguments:
. tm \$*
..
.ec
Unfortunately, draft mode cannot be used universally. Although it is good enough
for defining normal macros, draft mode will fail with advanced applications, such
as indirectly defined strings, registers, etc. An optimal way is to define and
test all macros in draft mode and then do the backslash doubling as a final step;
do not forget to remove the .eo request.
Tips for Macro Definitions
· Start every line with a dot, for example, by using the groff request .nop for
text lines, or write your own macro that handles also text lines with a leading
dot.
.de Text
. if (\\n[.$] == 0) \
. return
. nop \)\\$*[rs]
..
· Write a comment macro that works both for copy-in and draft mode; for as escaping
is off in draft mode, trouble might occur when normal comments are used. For ex-
ample, the following macro just ignores its arguments, so it acts like a comment
line:
.de c
..
.c This is like a comment line.
· In long macro definitions, make ample use of comment lines or empty lines for a
better structuring.
· To increase readability, use groff’s indentation facility for requests and macro
calls (arbitrary whitespace after the leading dot).
Diversions
Diversions can be used to realize quite advanced programming constructs. They are
comparable to pointers to large data structures in the C programming language, but
their usage is quite different.
In their simplest form, diversions are multi-line strings, but they get their power
when diversions are used dynamically within macros. The information stored in a
diversion can be retrieved by calling the diversion just like a macro.
Most of the problems arising with diversions can be avoided if you are conscious
about the fact that diversions always deal with complete lines. If diversions are
used when the line buffer has not been flashed, strange results are produced; not
knowing this, many people get desperate about diversions. To ensure that a diver-
sion works, line breaks should be added at the right places. To be on the secure
side, enclose everything that has to do with diversions into a pair of line breaks;
for example, by amply using .br requests. This rule should be applied to diversion
definition, both inside and outside, and to all calls of diversions. This is a bit
of overkill, but it works nicely.
[If you really need diversions which should ignore the current partial line, use
environments to save the current partial line and/or use the .box request.]
The most powerful feature using diversions is to start a diversion within a macro
definition and end it within another macro. Then everything between each call of
this macro pair is stored within the diversion and can be manipulated from within
the macros.
FILES
All macro names must be named name.tmac to fully use the tmac mechanism. tmac.name
as with classical packages is possible as well, but deprecated.
The macro files are kept in the tmac directories; a colon separated list of these
constitutes the tmac path.
The search sequence for macro files is (in that order):
· the directories specified with troff/groff’s -M command line option
· the directories given in the $GROFF_TMAC_PATH environment variable
· the current directory (only if in unsafe mode, which is enabled by the -U command
line switch)
· the home directory
· a platform-specific directory, being /usr/lib/groff/site-tmac in this installa-
tion
· a site-specific (platform-independent) directory, being /usr/share/groff/site-
tmac in this installation
· the main tmac directory, being /usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/tmac in this installa-
tion
ENVIRONMENT
$GROFF_TMAC_PATH
A colon separated list of additional tmac directories in which to search for
macro files. See the previous section for a detailed description.
AUTHOR
Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This document is distributed under the terms of the FDL (GNU Free Documentation Li-
cense) 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 GNU copyleft site 〈http://www.gnu.org/
copyleft/fdl.html〉.
This document is part of groff, the GNU roff distribution. It was written by Bernd
Warken 〈bwarken AT mayn.de〉; it is maintained by Werner Lemberg 〈wl AT gnu.org〉.
SEE ALSO
A complete reference for all parts of the groff system is found in the groff in-
fo(1) file.
groff(1)
an overview of the groff system.
groff_man(7),
groff_mdoc(7),
groff_me(7),
groff_mm(7),
groff_mom(7),
groff_ms(7),
groff_www(7).
the groff tmac macro packages.
groff(7)
the groff language.
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard is available at the FHS web site 〈http://
www.pathname.com/fhs/〉.
Groff Version 1.18.1.1 21 August 2002 GROFF_TMAC(5)
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