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GROFF_FILENAMES(5)                       File Formats Manual                      GROFF_FILENAMES(5)



NAME
       groff_filenames - filename extensions for roff and groff

DESCRIPTION
       Since the evolution of roff in the 1970s, a whole bunch of filename extensions for roff files
       were used.

       The roff extensions refer to preprocessors or macro packages.  These extensions are fixed  in
       all Unix-like operating systems.

       Later  on,  groff  added  some more extensions.  This man page is about these filename exten‐
       sions.

COMPRESSION OF ROFF FILES
       Each roff file can be optionally compressed.  That means that the total filename ends with  a
       compressor name.  So the whole filename has the structure <name>.<extension>[.<compression>].

       Best-known are the compressor extensions .Z, .gz, and .bzip2.  Relatively new is .xz.

       From  now  on,  we will ignore the compressions and only comment the structure <name>.<exten‐
       sion>.

MAN PAGES
       The Unix manual pages are widely called man pages.  The man page style is the best known part
       of the roff language.

       The extensions for man should be better documented.  So this is documented here.

       Files written in the man language use the following extension: *.<section>[<group>].

   Man page Sections
       The traditional man page <section> is a digit from 1 to 8.

       <name>.1
       <name>.2
       <name>.3
       <name>.4
       <name>.5
       <name>.6
       <name>.7
       <name>.8
              Classic man page sections.

       In  older  commercial  Unix  systems,  the 3 characters l, n, and o were also used as section
       names.  This is today deprecated, but there are still documents in this format.

       <name>.l
       <name>.n
       <name>.o
              Deprecated man page sections, which stood for “local”, “new”, and “old”, respectively.

   Man page Group Extensions
       The <group> extension in .<section>[<group>] is optional, but it can be any  string  of  word
       characters.   Usually  programmers use a group name that is already used, e.g. x for X Window
       System documents or tcl to refer to the Tcl programming language.

       Examples:

       groff.1
              is the man page for groff in section 1 without a group

       xargs.1posix.gz
              is the man page for the program xargs in section 1 and group  posix;  moreover  it  is
              compressed with gz (gzip).

       config.5ssl
              OpenSSL CONF library configuration files from section 5 with group ssl.

       dpkg-reconfigure.8cdebconf
              man page for the program dpkg-reconfigure in section 8 and group cdebconf.

   Source of man pages
       There are 2 roff languages for writing man pages: man and mdoc.

       The names of these 2 styles are taken as extensions for the source code files of man pages in
       the groff package.

       <name>.man
              traditional Unix-like man page format within groff source files.

       <name>.n
              A temporary man page file produced from a name.man man page by a run  of  make  within
              the groff source package.

       <name>.mdoc
              Man page format in BSD.

       <name>.1b
              Man page format in heirloom roff .

       <name>.mandoc
              Files  using this extension recognize both man page formats in groff and other proces‐
              sors.

TRADITIONAL TROFF EXTENSIONS
   Files Using Macro Packages
       The classical roff languages were interpreted by the traditional troff and nroff programs.

       There were several roff languages, each represented by a macro-package.  Each of  these  pro‐
       vided a suitable file name extension:

       <name>.me
              roff file using the me macro package.

       <name>.mm
              roff file using the mm macro package

       <name>.ms
              roff file using the ms macro package

       All of these classical roff languages and their extensions are still very active in groff.

   Source Code for Macro Packages (TMAC Files)
       In  traditional  roff the source code for the macro packages was stored in TMAC files.  Their
       file names have the form:

       tmac.<package>,
              <package> is the name of the macro package without the leading m character,  which  is
              reintegrated by the option -m.

       For example, tmac.an is the source for the man macro package.

       In the groff source, more suitable file names were integrated, see later on.

   Preprocessors
       Moreover, the following preprocessors were used as filename extension:

       <name>.chem
              for the integration of chemical formulas

       <name>.eqn
              for the mathematical use of equations

       <name>.pic
              graphical tool

       <name>.tbl
              for tables with tbl

       <name>.ref
              for files using the prefer preprocessor

   Classical Roff Files
       <name>.t
       <name>.tr
              for files using the roff language of any kind

NEW GROFF EXTENSIONS
       GNU  roff  groff is the actual roff standard, both for classical roff and new extensions.  So
       even the used new extensions in the source code should be regarded as actual  standard.   The
       following extensions are used instead of classical .t or .tr:

       <name>.groff
       <name>.roff
              general ending for files using the groff language

   Source Code for Macro Packages (TMAC Files)
       As  the  classical  form  tmac.<package_without_m>,  of the TMAC file names is quite strange,
       groff added the following structures:

       <package_without_m>.tmac
       m<package>.tmac
       groff_m<package>.tmac

   Files Using new Macro Packages
       Groff uses the following new macro packages:

       <name>.mmse
              file with swedish mm macros for groff

       <name>.mom
              files written in the groff macro package mom

       <name>.www
              files written in HTML-like groff macros.

   Preprocessors and Postprocessors
       <name>.hdtbl
              Heidelberger tables, an alternative to the preprocessor tbl.  See groff_hdtbl(7).

       <name>.grap
              files written for the graphical grap processor.

       <name>.grn
              for including gremlin(1), pictures, see grn(1).

       <name>.pdfroff
              transform this file with pdfroff of the groff system

AUTHORS
       This document was written by Bernd Warken ⟨groff-bernd.warken-72 AT web.de⟩.

SEE ALSO
       History and future
              roff(7), man-pages(7), groff_diff(7), groff(7)

       Compression
              uncompress(1posix), gzip2(1), bzip2(1), xz(1)

       A man page of the naming form name(n) can be read in text mode by
              man n name
       or in graphical mode (PDF) by
              groffer n name

       Gunnar Ritter's Heirloom roff project  ⟨https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools⟩.   You
       can get this package with the shell command:
              $ git clone https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools



groff 1.22.4                                23 March 2022                         GROFF_FILENAMES(5)