On Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) PHP/5.2.5 mod_perl/1.30 mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a
Under GNU General Public License
2008-12-02 07:46 @38.103.63.58 CrawledBy CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)
GROFFER(1) GROFFER(1)
NAME
groffer - display groff files and man pages on X and tty
SYNOPSIS
groffer [option...] [--] [filespec...]
groffer --apropos|--apropos-data|--apropos-devel|--apropos-progs name
groffer -h|--help
groffer -v|--version
DESCRIPTION
The groffer program is the easiest way to use groff(1). It can display arbitrary
documents written in the groff(7) language or other roff(7) languages that are com-
patible to the original troff language. 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 creat-
ing special behaviors. This can be done in configuration files, with the shell en-
vironment variable $GROFFER_OPT, or on the command line.
The output can be generated and viewed in several different ways available for
groff. This includes the groff native X viewer gxditview(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 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 trans-
formed into a single document in the normal way of groff.
OPTION OVERVIEW
breaking options
[--apropos name] [--apropos-data name] [--apropos-devel name] [--apropos-
progs name] [-h|--help] [-v|--version]
groffer mode options
[--auto] [--default] [--default-modes mode1,mode2,...] [--dvi] [--dvi-
viewer prog] [--groff] [--html] [--html-viewer prog] [--man] [--mode
display_mode] [--no-man] [--pdf] [--pdf-viewer prog] [--ps] [--ps-viewer
prog] [--text] [--tty] [--tty-viewer prog] [--www] [--www-viewer prog] [--x
|--X] [--x-viewer|--X-viewer prog]
development options
[--debug] [--shell]
options related to groff
[-P|--postproc-arg opt_or_arg] [-Q|--source] [-T|--device device] [-Z
|--intermediate-output|--ditroff]
All further groff short options are accepted.
X Window toolkit options
[--bd pixels] [--bg|--background color] [--bw pixels] [--display X-display]
[--fg|--foreground color] [--ft|--font font_name] [--geometry size_pos]
[--resolution value] [--rv] [--title string] [--xrm X_resource]
options from man
[--all] [--ascii] [--ditroff] [--extension suffix] [--locale language]
[--local-file] [--manpath dir1:dir2:...] [--pager program] [--sections
sec1:sec2:...] [--systems sys1,sys2,...] [--troff-device device] [--whatis
]
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.
man:name(section)
name(section)
search the man page name in man section section.
man:name.s
name.s if s is a character in [1-9on], search for a man page name in
man section s.
man:name man page in the lowest man section that has name.
s name if s is a character in [1-9on], search for a man page name in
man section s.
name if name is not an existing file search for the man page name in
the lowest man section.
OPTION DETAILS
The groffer program can usually be run with very few options. But for special pur-
poses, it supports many options. These can be classified in 5 option classes.
All short options of groffer are compatible with the short options of groff(1).
All long options of groffer are compatible with the long options of man(1).
groffer breaking Options
As soon as one of these options is found on the command line it is executed, print-
ed to standard output, and the running groffer is terminated thereafter. All other
arguments are ignored.
--apropos name
Start the apropos(1) command for searching within man page descriptions.
That slightly differs from the strange behavior of the --apropos program of
man(1), which has no argument of its own, but takes the file arguments in-
stead. Practically both concepts are compatible.
--apropos-data name
Show only the apropos(1) descriptions for data documents, in the man(7) sec-
tions 4, 5, and 7.
--apropos-devel name
Show only the apropos(1) descriptions for development documents, in the
man(7) sections 2, 3, and 9.
--apropos-progs name
Show only the apropos(1) descriptions for documents on programs, in the
man(7) sections 1, 6, and 8.
-h | --help
Print a helping information with a short explanation of option sto standard
output.
-v | --version
Print version information to standard output.
groffer Mode Options
The display mode and the viewer programs are determined by these options. If none
of these mode and viewer options is specified groffer tries to find a suitable dis-
play mode automatically.
--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 man-
ner; actually, this means to try the modes x, ps, and tty in this sequence.
--dvi Equivalent to --mode=dvi.
--dvi-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for dvi mode. This can be a file name or a program
to be searched in $PATH. Known dvi viewers inlude xdvi(1) and dvilx(1) In
each case, arguments can be provided additionally.
--groff
Equivalent to --mode=groff.
--html Equivalent to --mode=html.
--html-viewer
Equivalent to --www-viewer.
--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 spec-
ified before.
dvi Display formatted input in a dvi viewer program. By default, the
formatted input is displayed with the xdvi(1) program. --dvi.
groff After the file determination, switch groffer to process the input
like groff(1) would do . This disables the groffer viewing features.
html Translate the input into html format and display the result in a web
browser program. By default, the existence of a sequence of standard
web browsers is tested, starting with konqueror(1) and mozilla(1).
The text html viewer is lynx(1).
pdf Display formatted input in a PDF (Portable Document Format) viewer
program. By default, the input is formatted by groff using the
Postscript device, then it is transformed into the PDF file format
using gs(1), and finally displayed either with the xpdf(1) or the
acroread(1) program. PDF has a big advantage because the text is
displayed graphically and is searchable as well. But as the trans-
formation takes a considerable amount of time, this mode is not suit-
able as a default device for the auto mode.
ps Display formatted input in a Postscript viewer program. By default,
the formatted input is displayed with the ghostview(1) program.
text Format in a groff text mode and write the result to standard output
without a pager or viewer program. The text device, latin1 by de-
fault, can be chosen with option -T.
tty Format in a groff text mode and write the result to standard output
using a text pager program, even when in X Window.
www Equivalent to --www.
X Display formatted input in a native roff viewer. By default, the
formatted input is displayed with the gxditview(1) program, being
distributed together with groff, or with xditview(1), which is dis-
tributed as a standard X tool.
x Equivalent to --mode=X.
The following modes do not use the groffer viewing features. They are only
interesting for advanced applications.
groff Generate device output with plain groff without using the special
viewing features of groffer. If no device was specified by option -T
the groff default ps is assumed.
source Display the source code of the input without formatting; equivalent
to -Q.
--pdf Equivalent to --mode=pdf.
--pdf-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for pdf mode. This can be a file name or a program
to be searched in $PATH. In each case, arguments can be provided addition-
ally.
--ps Equivalent to --mode=ps.
--ps-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for ps mode. This can be a file name or a program to
be searched in $PATH. Common Postscript viewers inlude gv(1), ghostview(1),
and gs(1), In each case, arguments can be provided additionally.
--text Equivalent to --mode=text.
--tty Equivalent to --mode=tty.
--tty-viewer
Choose tty display mode, that means displaying in a text pager even when in
X; eqivalent to --mode=tty.
--www Equivalent to --mode=www.
--www-viewer prog
Set the web browser program for viewing in www mode. Each program that ac-
cepts html input and allows the file://localhost/dir/file syntax on the com-
mand line is suitable as viewer program; it can be the path name of an exe-
cutable file or a program in $PATH. In each case, arguments can be provided
additionally.
-X | --X | --x
Equivalent to --mode=X.
--X-viewer | --x-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for x mode. Suitable viewer programs are
gxditview(1) and xditview(1). But the argument can be any executable file
or a program in $PATH. In each case, arguments can be provided additional-
ly.
-- Signals the end of option processing; all remaining arguments are interpret-
ed as filespec parameters.
Besides these, groffer accepts all arguments that are valid for the groff(1) pro-
gram. All non-groffer options are sent unmodified via grog to groff. Postproces-
sors, macro packages, compatibility with classical troff, and much more can be man-
ually specified.
Options for Development
--debug
Print debugging information for development only. Actually, a function call
stack is printed if an error occurs.
--shell shell_program
Specify the shell under which the groffer script should be run. The script
first tests whether this option is set (either by configuration, within
$GROFF_OPT or as a command line option); if so, the script is rerun under
the shell program specified with the option argument.
-Q | --source
Output the roff source code of the input files without further processing.
This is the equivalent --mode=source.
Other useful debugging options are the groff options -V and -Z and option
--mode=groff.
Options related to groff
All short options of groffer are compatible with the short options of groff(1).
The following of groff options have either an additional special meaning within
groffer or make sense for normal usage.
Because of the special outputting behavior of the groff options -V and -Z 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.
-a This generates an ascii approximation of output in text modes. That could
be important when the text pager has problems with control sequences.
-m file
Add file as a groff macro file. This is useful in case it cannot be recog-
nized automatically.
-P opt_or_arg
Send the argument opt_or_arg as an option or option argument to the actual
groff postprocessor.
-T | --device devname
This option determines groff’s output device. The most important devices
are the text output devices for referring to the different character sets,
such as ascii, utf8, latin1, and others. Each of these arguments switches
groffer into a text mode using this device, to mode tty if the actual mode
is not a text mode. The following devname arguments are mapped to the cor-
responding groffer --mode=devname option: dvi, html, and ps. All X* argu-
ments are mapped to mode X. Each other devname argument switches to mode
groff using this device.
-V Switch into groff mode and show only the groff calling pipe without format-
ting the input. This an advanced option from groff(1), only useful for de-
bugging.
-X was made equivalent to --mode=x; this slightly enhances the facility of
groff’s option.
-Z | --intermediate-output | --ditroff
Switch into groff mode and format the input with groff intermediate output
without postprocessing; see groff_out(1). 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 grof-
fer, 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 Toolkit 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 op-
tions, for example, groffer uses the option --font for the X option -font.
See X(1), X(7), and the documentation on the X toolkit options for more details on
these options and their arguments.
--background color
Set the background color of the viewer window.
--bd pixels
Specifies the color of the border surrounding the viewer window.
--bg color
This is equivalent to --background.
--bw pixels
Specifies the width in pixels of the border surrounding the viewer window.
--display X-display
Set the X display on which the viewer program shall be started, see the X
Window documentation for the syntax of the argument.
--foreground color
Set the foreground color of the viewer window.
--fg color
This is equivalent to -foreground.
--font font_name
Set the font used by the viewer window. The argument is an X font name.
--ft font_name
This is equivalent to --ft.
--geometry size_pos
Set the geometry of the display window, that means its size and its starting
position. See X(7) for the syntax of the argument.
--resolution value
Set X resolution in dpi (dots per inch) in some viewer programs. The only
supported dpi values are 75 and 100. Actually, the default resolution for
groffer is set to 75.
--rv Reverse foreground and background color of the viewer window.
--title ’some text’
Set the title for the viewer window.
--xrm ’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 ignored.
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.
--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.
In the following, the man options that have a special meaning for groffer are docu-
mented.
The full set of long and short options of the GNU man program can be passed via the
environment variable $MANOPT; see man(1) if your system has GNU man installed.
--all In searching man pages, retrieve all suitable documents instead of only one.
-7 | --ascii
In text modes, display ASCII translation of special characters.
--ditroff
Eqivalent to groffer -Z.
--extension suffix
Restrict man page search to file names that have suffix appended to their
section element. For example, in the file name /usr/share/man/man3/termin-
fo.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 pro-
gram defaults. If the argument is set to the empty string "" the search for
man page is disabled.
--pager
Set the pager program in tty mode; default is less. This is equivalent to
--tty-viewer.
--sections ’sec1:sec2:...’
Restrict searching for man pages to the given sections, a colon-separated
list.
--systems ’sys1,sys2,...’
Search for man pages for the given operating systems; the argument systems
is a comma-separated list.
--whatis
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.
--where
Eqivalent to --location.
Additionally, the following short option of man is supported as well.
Filespec Arguments
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 such as groff does.
The strange POSIX behavior that maps all arguments behind the first non-option ar-
gument into filespec arguments is ignored. The GNU behavior to recognize options
even when mixed with filespec arguments is used througout. But, as usual, the dou-
ble minus argument -- still takes all following arguments as filespecs.
Each filespec parameters can have one of the following forms.
No filespec parameters means that groffer waits for standard input. The minus op-
tion - stands for standard input, too, but can occur several 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 into several
sections. The classical man sections have a single-character name, either are a
digit from 1 to 9 or one of the characters n or o. 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 extended by a following string. But the
special groffer man page facility is based on the classical single character sec-
tions.
man:name(section) and name(section) search the man page name in man section sec-
tion, where section can be any string, but it must exist in the man system.
Next some patterns based on the classical man sections were constructed.
man:name.s and name.s search for a man page name in man section s if s is a classi-
cal man section mentioned above. Otherwise search for a man page named name.s in
the lowest man section.
Now man: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 ar-
guments. 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 al-
so choose it with options. The modes are selected by option the arguments of
--mode=anymode. Additionally, each of this argument can be specified as an option
of its own, such as --anymode. Most of these modes have a viewer program, which
can be chosen by an option that is constructed like --anymode-viewer.
Several different modes are offered, graphical X modes, 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 fi-
nally tty mode. This mode testing sequence for auto mode can be changed by speci-
fying 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 only in the X Window environment (or similar im-
plementations within other windowing environments). The environment variable
$DISPLAY and the option --display are used for specifying 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 --default-modes.
Known viewers for the graphical display modes and their standard X Window viewer
progams are
· X Window roff viewers such as gxditview(1) or xditview(1) (in x or X mode),
· in a Postscript viewer (ps mode),
· in a dvi viewer program (dvi mode),
· in a PDF viewer (pdf mode),
· in a web browser (html or www mode),
The pdf mode has a major advantage — it is the only graphical diplay mode that al-
lows to search for text within the viewer; this can be a really important feature.
Unfortunately, it takes some time to transform the input into the PDF format, so it
was not chosen as the major mode.
These graphical viewers can be customized by options of the X Window Toolkit. But
the groffer options use a leading double minus instead of the single minus used by
the X Window Toolkit.
Text mode
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 $DISPLAY is not set or empty, groffer assumes that it should use
tty mode.
In the actual implementation, the groff output device latin1 is chosen for text
modes. This can be changed by specifying option -T or --device.
The pager to be used can be specified by one of the options --pager and --tty-
viewer, or by the environment variable $PAGER. If all of this is not used the
less(1) program with the option -r for correctly displaying control sequences is
used as the default pager.
Special Modes for Debugging and Development
These modes use the groffer file determination and decompression. This is combined
into a single input file that is fed directly into groff with different strategy
without the groffer viewing facilities. These modes are regarded as advanced, they
are useful for debugging and development purposes.
The source mode with 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 -Z disables post-processing, thus producing the groff in-
termediate 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 repre-
sents a local file; if it is not an existing file name, it is assumed to represent
a name of a man page. This behavior can be modified by the following options.
--man forces to interpret all file parameters as filespecs for searching
man pages.
--no-man
--local-file
disable the man searching; so only local files are displayed.
If neither a local file nor a man page was retrieved for some file parameter a
warning is issued on standard error, but processing is continued.
The groffer program provides a search facility for man pages. All long options,
all environment variables, and most of the functionality of the GNU man(1) program
were implemented. This inludes the extended file names of man pages, for example,
the man page of groff in man section 7 may be stored under
/usr/share/man/man7/groff.7.gz, where /usr/share/man/ is part of the man path, the
subdirectory man7 and the file extension .7 refer to the man section 7; .gz shows
the compression of the file.
The cat pages (preformatted man pages) are intentionally excluded from the search
because groffer is a roff program that wants to format by its own. With the excel-
lent performance of the actual computers, the preformatted man pages aren’t neces-
sary any longer.
The algorithm for retrieving man pages uses five search methods. They are succes-
sively tried until a method works.
· The search path can be manually specified by using the option --manpath. An emp-
ty argument disables the man page searching. This overwrites the other methods.
· If this is not available the environment variable $MANPATH is searched.
· If this is empty, the program tries to read it from the environment variable
$MANOPT.
· If this does not work a reasonable default path from $PATH is searched for
man pages.
· If this does not work, the manpath(1) program for determining a path of man di-
rectories is tried.
After this, the path elements for the language (locale) and operating system spe-
cific man pages are added to the man path; their sequence is determined automati-
cally. 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 de-
termined from both environment variables and command line options.
The locale (language) is determined like in GNU man, that is from highest to lowest
precedence:
· --locale
· $GROFFER_OPT
· $MANOPT
· $LCALL
· $LC_MESSAGES
· $LANG.
The language locale is usually specified in the POSIX 1003.1 based format:
<language>[_<territory>[.<character-set>[,<version>]]],
but the two-letter code in <language> is sufficient for most purposes.
If no man pages for a complicated locale are found the country part consisting of
the first two characters (without the ‘_’, ‘.’, and ‘,’, parts) of the locale is
searched as well.
If still not found the corresponding man page in the default language is used in-
stead. As usual, this default can be specified by one of C or POSIX. The
man pages in the default language are usually in English.
Several operating systems can be given by appending their names, separated by a
comma. This is then specified by the environment variable $SYSTEM or by the com-
mand line option --systems. The precedence is similar to the locale case above
from highest to lowest precedence: Topic --systems
· $GROFFER_OPT
· $MANOPT
· $SYSTEM.
When searching for man pages this man path with the additional language and system
specific directories is used.
The search can further be restricted by limiting it to certain sections. A single
section can be specified within each filespec argument, several sections as a
colon-separated list in command line option --sections or environment variable
$MANSECT. When no section was specified a set of standard sections is searched un-
til a suitable man page was found.
Finally, the search can be restricted to a so-called extension. This is a postfix
that acts like a subsection. It can be specified by --extension or environment
variable $EXTENSION.
For further details on man page searching, see man(1).
DECOMPRESSION
The program has a decompression facility. If standard input or a file that was re-
trieved from the command line parameters is compressed with a format that is sup-
ported 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 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 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 contain-
ing white-space or special shell characters should be quoted.
System Variables
The groffer program is a shell script that is run through /bin/sh, which can be in-
ternally linked to programs like bash(1). The corresponding system environment is
automatically effective. The following variables have a special meaning for grof-
fer.
$DISPLAY
If this variable is set this indicates that the X Window system is running.
Testing this variable decides on whether graphical or text output is gener-
ated. 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 ex-
ample, depending on your system, groffer can be started on the second moni-
tor 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 in-
terpreted as the locale, the language to be used, especially when retrieving
man pages. A locale name is typically of the form language[_territo-
ry[.codeset[@modifier]]], where language is an ISO 639 language code, terri-
tory is an ISO 3166 country code, and codeset is a character set or encoding
identifier like ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8; see setlocale(3). The locale values C
and POSIX stand for the default, i.e. the man page directories without a
language prefix. This is the same behavior as when all 3 variables are un-
set.
$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 shell script are called without a fixed
path. Thus this environment variable determines the set of programs used
within the run of groffer.
$POSIXLY_CORRECT
If set to a non-empty value this chooses the POSIX mode. This is done in-
ternally by some shells. groffer ignores the bad POSIX behavior for option
processing, that means that option processing will be finished as soon as a
non-option argument is found. Instead the GNU behavior of freely mixing op-
tions and filespec arguments is used in any case. Usually, you do not want
to set this environment variable externally.
Groff Variables
The groffer program internally calls groff, so all environment variables documented
in groff(1) are internally used within groffer as well. The following variables
have a direct meaning for the groffer program.
$GROFF_TMPDIR
If the value of this variable is an existing, writable directory, groffer
uses it for storing its temporary files, just as groff does.
Man Variables
Parts of the functionality of the man program were implemented in groffer; support
for all environment variables documented in man(1) was added to groffer, but the
meaning was slightly modified due to the different approach in groffer; but the us-
er interface is the same. The man environment variables can be overwritten by op-
tions 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 extract-
ed. The options specified in this variable overwrite the values of the oth-
er environment variables taht are specific to man. All options specified in
this variable are overridden by the options given on the command line.
$MANPATH
If set, this variable contains the directories in which the man page trees
are stored. This is overridden by option --manpath.
$MANSECT
If this is a colon separated list of section names, the search for man pages
is restricted to those manual sections in that order. This is overridden by
option --sections.
$SYSTEM
If this is set to a comma separated list of names these are interpreted as
man page trees for different operating systems. This variable can be over-
written by option --systems; see there for details.
The environment variable $MANROFFSEQ is ignored by groffer because the necessary
preprocessors are determined automatically.
CONFIGURATION FILES
The groffer program can be preconfigured by two configuration files. This configu-
ration can be overridden at each program start by command line options or by the
environment variable $GROFFER_OPT.
/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 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 be-
ginning minus are appended to the existing value of $GROFFER_OPT. This easily al-
lows 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.
The only option that needs a minus line in the configuration files is --shell. The
reason is that its argument must be called at a very early stage before the whole
syntax of the configuration can be transformed.
It makes sense to use these configuration files for the following tasks:
· Preset command line options by writing them into lines starting with a minus
sign.
· Preset environment variables recognized by groffer.
· Write a function for calling a viewer program for a special mode and feed this
name into its corresponding --mode-viewer option. Note that the name of such a
function must coincide with some existing program in the system path $PATH in or-
der to be recognized by groffer.
As an example, consider the following configuration file in ~/.groff/groffer.conf,
say.
# groffer configuration file
#
# groffer options that are used in each call of groffer
--shell=/bin/bash
--resolution=100
--foreground=DarkBlue
--x-viewer=’gxditview -geometry 850x800’
#
# some shell commands
if test "$DISPLAY" = ""; then
DISPLAY=’localhost:0.0’
fi
date >>~/mygroffer.log
This configuration sets four groffer options and runs two shell commands. This has
the following effects:
· Lines starting with a # character are
· Use /bin/bash as the shell to run the groffer script.
· Take a resolution of 100 dpi and a text color of DarkBlue in all viewers that
support this.
· Force gxditview(1) as the X-mode viewer using the geometry option for setting the
width to 850 dpi and the height to 800 dpi.
· The variable $DISPLAY 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.
· Just for fun, the date of each groffer start is written to the file mygroffer.log
in the home directory.
EXAMPLES
The usage of groffer is very easy. Usually, it is just called with a file name or
man page. The following examples, however, show that groffer has much more fancy
capabilities.
sh# groffer /usr/local/share/doc/groff/meintro.ms.gz
Decompress, format and display the compressed file meintro.ms.gz in the di-
rectory /usr/local/share/doc/groff, using gxditview as graphical viewer when
in X Window, or the less(1) pager program when not in X.
sh# groffer groff
If the file ./groff exists use it as input. Otherwise interpret the argu-
ment 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 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 paran-
thesis are special shell characters; escaping them with a backslash charac-
ter \( and \) would be possible, too. The formatted files are concatenated
and displayed in one piece.
sh# LANG=de groffer --man --www --www-viever=mozilla ls
Retrieve the German man page (language de) for the ls program, decompress
it, format it to html format (www mode) and view the result in the web
browser galeon . The option --man guarantees that the man page is re-
trieved, 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 -Z), using macro package by foo (groff option
-m)
sh# echo ’\f[CB]WOW!’ |
> groffer --x --bg red --fg yellow --geometry 200x100 -
Display the word WOW! in a small window in constant-width bold font, using
color yellow on red background.
COMPATIBILITY
The groffer shell script is compatible with both GNU and POSIX. POSIX compatibili-
ty refers to IEEE P1003.2/D11.2 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 ‘lo-
cal’ is needed for serious programming this temporary POSIX deprecation was ig-
nored.
Most GNU shells are compatible with this interpretation of POSIX, but provide much
more facilities. Nevertheless this script uses only a restricted set of shell lan-
guage elements and shell builtins. 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 implementations of
the GNU shells: POSIX sh(1), bash(1), and others. Free POSIX compatible shells and
shell utilities for most operating systems are available at the GNU software
archive 〈http://www.gnu.org/software/〉.
The shell can be chosen by the option --shell. This option can also be given to
the environment variable $GROFF_OPT. If you want to write it to one of the groffer
configuration files you must use the single option style, a line starting with
--shell.
The groffer program provides its own parser for command line arguments that is com-
patible to both POSIX getopts(1) and GNU getopt(1) except for shortcuts of long op-
tions. The following standard types of options are supported.
· A single minus always refers to 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
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,
--long=arg is equivalent to --long arg .
· An argument of -- ends option parsing; all further command line arguments are in-
terpreted as file name arguments.
· By default, all command line arguments that are neither options nor option argu-
ments 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 $POSIXLY_CORRECT
to a non-empty value. Then the strange POSIX non-option 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 command 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
$POSIXLY_CORRECT.
SEE ALSO
groff(1)
troff(1)
Details on the options and environment variables available in groff; all of
them can be used with groffer.
man(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 documents the options and
environment variables that are supported by groffer.
gxditview(1)
xditview(1x)
Viewers for groffer’s x mode.
gv(1)
ghostview(1)
Viewers for groffer’s ps mode.
gs(1) Transformer from ps to pdf; and a ps viewer.
xpdf(1)
Viewers for pdf files.
xdvi(1)
dvilx(1)
Viewers for groffer’s dvi mode.
less(1)
Standard pager program for the tty mode.
gzip(1)
bzip2(1)
The decompression programs supported by groffer.
groff(7)
Documentation of the groff language.
grog(1)
Internally, groffer tries to guess the groff command line options from the
input using this program.
groff_out(5)
Documentation on the groff intermediate output (ditroff output).
AUTHOR
This file was written by Bernd Warken.
COPYING
Copyright (C) 2001,2002,2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of groff, a free software project. You can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later ver-
sion.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with groff,
see the files COPYING and LICENSE in the top directory of the groff source package.
Or read the man page gpl(1). You can also write to the Free Software Foundation,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
Groff Version 1.18.1.1 02 June 2004 GROFFER(1)
Generated by $Id: phpMan.php,v 4.55 2007/09/05 04:42:51 chedong Exp $ Author: Che Dong
On Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) PHP/5.2.5 mod_perl/1.30 mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a
Under GNU General Public License
2008-12-02 07:46 @38.103.63.58 CrawledBy CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)