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GROTTY(1) General Commands Manual GROTTY(1)

NAME
grotty - groff driver for typewriter-like devices

SYNOPSIS
grotty [-bBcdfhioruUv] [-F dir] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
grotty translates the output of GNU troff into a form suitable for typewriter-like devices.
Normally grotty should be invoked by using the groff command with a -Tascii, -Tlatin1 or
-Tutf8 option on ASCII based systems, and with -Tcp1047 and -Tutf8 on EBCDIC based hosts. If
no files are given, grotty reads the standard input. A filename of - also causes grotty to
read the standard input. Output is written to the standard output.

By default, grotty emits SGR escape sequences (from ISO 6429, also called ANSI color escapes)
to change text attributes (bold, italic, colors). This makes it possible to have eight dif‐
ferent background and foreground colors; additionally, bold and italic attributes can be used
at the same time (by using the BI font).

The following colors are defined in tty.tmac: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, ma‐
genta, cyan. Unknown colors are mapped to the default color (which is dependent on the set‐
tings of the terminal; in most cases, this is black for the foreground and white for the
background).

Use the -c switch to revert to the old behaviour, printing a bold character c with the se‐
quence “c BACKSPACE c” and an italic character c by the sequence “_ BACKSPACE c”. At the
same time, color output is disabled. The same effect can be achieved by setting either the
GROFF_NO_SGR environment variable or using the ‘sgr’ X command (see below).

(Debian-specific: The old behaviour is the default when using the man and mdoc macro pack‐
ages, because most pagers either fail to cope with SGR escape sequences or need special op‐
tions to do so. SGR output can be re-enabled permanently by editing /etc/groff/man.local and
/etc/groff/mdoc.local, or temporarily by setting the GROFF_SGR environment variable to some‐
thing non-empty.)

For SGR support, it is necessary to use the -R option of less(1) to disable the interpreta‐
tion of grotty's old output format. Consequently, all programs which use less as the pager
program have to pass this option to it. For man(1) in particular, either add -R to the PAGER
environment variable, e.g.

PAGER="/usr/bin/less -R"
export PAGER

or use the -P option of man to set the pager executable and its options, or modify the con‐
figuration file of man in a similar fashion. Note that with some man(1) versions, you have
to use the MANPAGER environment variable instead.

grotty's old output format can be displayed on a terminal by piping through ul(1). Pagers
such as more(1) or less(1) are also able to display these sequences. Use either -B or -U
when piping into less(1); use -b when piping into more(1). There is no need to filter the
output through col(1) since grotty never outputs reverse line feeds.

The font description file may contain a command

internalname n

where n is a decimal integer. If the 01 bit in n is set, then the font is treated as an
italic font; if the 02 bit is set, then it is treated as a bold font. The code field in the
font description field gives the code which is used to output the character. This code can
also be used in the \N escape sequence in troff.

If the DESC file contains the keyword unicode, grotty emits Unicode characters in UTF-8 en‐
coding. Otherwise, it emits characters in a single-byte encoding depending on the data in
the font description files. See the groff_font(5) man page for more details.

OPTIONS
Whitespace is permitted between a command-line option and its argument.

-b Suppress the use of overstriking for bold characters. Ignored if -c isn't used.

-B Use only overstriking for bold-italic characters. Ignored if -c isn't used.

-c Use grotty's old output format (see above). This also disables color output. (De‐
bian-specific: This option is enabled by default when using the man and mdoc macro
packages. It can be disabled by default permanently by editing /etc/groff/man.local
and /etc/groff/mdoc.local, or temporarily by setting the GROFF_SGR environment vari‐
able to something non-empty.)

-d Ignore all \D commands. Without this grotty renders \D'l...' commands that have at
least one zero argument (and so are either horizontal or vertical) using -, |, and +
characters. In a similar way, grotty handles \D'p...' commands which consist entirely
of horizontal and vertical lines.

-f Use form feeds in the output. A form feed is output at the end of each page that has
no output on its last line.

-Fdir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for font and device description
files; name is the name of the device, usually ascii, latin1, utf8, or cp1047.

-h Use horizontal tabs in the output. Tabs are assumed to be set every 8 columns.

-i Use escape sequences to set the italic text attribute instead of the underline attri‐
bute for italic fonts (‘I’ and ‘BI’). Note that most terminals (including xterm)
don't support this. Ignored if -c is active.

-o Suppress overstriking (other than for bold or underlined characters in case the old
output format has been activated with -c).

-r Use escape sequences to set the reverse text attribute instead of the underline attri‐
bute for italic fonts (‘I’ and ‘BI’). Ignored if -c is active.

-u Suppress the use of underlining for italic characters. Ignored if -c isn't used.

-U Use only underlining for bold-italic characters. Ignored if -c isn't used.

-v Print the version number.

USAGE
grotty understands a single X command produced using the \X escape sequence.

\X'tty: sgr n'
If n is non-zero or missing, enable SGR output (this is the default), otherwise use
the old drawing scheme for bold and underline.

ENVIRONMENT
GROFF_NO_SGR
If set, the old drawing scheme for bold and underline (using the backspace character)
is active. Colors are disabled.

GROFF_FONT_PATH
A list of directories in which to search for the devname directory in addition to the
default ones. See troff(1) and groff_font(5) for more details.

FILES
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devascii/DESC
Device description file for the ascii device.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devascii/F
Font description file for font F of the ascii device.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devlatin1/DESC
Device description file for the latin1 device.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devlatin1/F
Font description file for font F of the latin1 device.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devutf8/DESC
Device description file for the utf8 device.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devutf8/F
Font description file for font F of the utf8 device.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devcp1047/DESC
Device description file for the cp1047 device.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devcp1047/F
Font description file for font F of the cp1047 device.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/tty.tmac
Macros for use with grotty.

/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/tty-char.tmac
Additional character definitions for use with grotty.

Note that on EBCDIC hosts, only files for the cp1047 device is installed.

BUGS
grotty is intended only for simple documents.

There is no support for fractional horizontal or vertical motions.

There is no support for \D commands other than horizontal and vertical lines.

Characters above the first line (i.e. with a vertical position of 0) cannot be printed.

Color handling differs from grops(1). \M doesn't set the fill color for closed graphic ob‐
jects (which grotty doesn't support anyway) but changes the background color of the character
cell, affecting all subsequent operations.

SEE ALSO
groff(1), troff(1), groff_out(5), groff_font(5), groff_char(7), ul(1), more(1), man(1),
less(1)

groff 1.22.4 23 March 2022 GROTTY(1)