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Questions tagged [roff]

The general name for a family of text formatting programs and mark-up languages, all descended from CTSS's 1964 `RUNOFF` system. Current versions are known as `groff`, `troff`, `nroff`, `ditroff`, etc. and are used at the command line to format manual pages (`man` pages) on Unix-like operating systems.

roff is the general name for a set of text formatting programs, known under names like troff, nroff, ditroff, groff, etc. A roff system consists of an extensible text formatting language and a set of programs for printing and converting to other text formats. Unix-like operating systems distribute a roff system as a core package. The most common roff system today is the free software implementation GNU roff, groff. groff implements the look-and-feel and functional‐ ity of its ancestors, with many extensions. -- From the man roff manual page, copyright Free Software Foundation, Inc. See the man page for a longer history.

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Find and install man file manually

I seem to be missing some man pages, notably gcc and g++. It doesn't help that I specify the section. whereis doesn't list man pages for those two, so I think they are simply not there. With Google I get a lot, for example:…
Emanuel Berg
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Is Troff Turing complete?

Troff supports both macro definitions using .de and branching using .if (see pages 5 and 6 of the Troff user's manual). In these two respects, it is very much like TeX. However, I don't know of highly complex programs written in Troff (unlike say…
typesanitizer
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Are ∈ and ℝ symbols available in eqn/roff?

A set of commonly used symbols to represent that a variable belongs to a given real coordinate space are ∈ ("ELEMENT OF", Unicode U+2208) and ℝ ("DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL R", Unicode U+211D). Are those two symbols available in eqn, troff, and/or groff?…
M.E.
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Nested lists in man page

I have a command line parameter that takes a number of flags afterwards, which I would like to have as a list inside the parameter list in the man page. Currently I am simply making lines of Flag - Description (man page), but this is not ideal for…
Mat
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How do I generate manpages using escape codes for bold, etc.?

While inspecting the source code of less, I noticed that the included manpage (less.man) used terminal escape codes for showing bold text: ^[[1mNAME^[[0m less - opposite of more ^[[1mSYNOPSIS^[[0m ^[[1mless -?^[[0m ^[[1mless…
muru
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Man page quotation characters

I've just been looking through a few man pages for a few different commands including grep and ifconfig. I've noticed over a few pages, the content uses a strange syntax to notate what i think are quotations (back-tick followed by a single or double…
Matt
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Emacs mode for man pages

I'm translating man pages, and have run in to a few problems with Emacs. How do you specify language? (With man, it looks like this man -Lsv shutdown for the Swedish "sv" subdirectory, if available.) In the Emacs man mode, you can use N or P to…
Emanuel Berg
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How do I convert a troff manpage with UTF-8 characters (czech to be precise) to PDF

I have a troff document (manpage) with UTF-8 characters and I am trying to convert it to a PDF. However, when using the -Tpdf option, the PDF generated does not show the correct characters. This is the command I am using: groff -k -Tutf-8 -pet -Tpdf…
magnusi
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TROFF to pdf or docx conversion?

I have my partially complete PhD thesis in TROFF format (?) - so it would laser print from the unix station back then. It has had a layer of Atari 1stWord encapsulation, which may still be at the header, but is essentially irrelevant as it was just…
K Robin Junga
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troff to PDF conversion

I am very new to UNIX and trying to learn troff. I have some set of very old written troff files (before 20 years from now). Some samples are…
Cylian
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groff to PS Conversion

I am very new to UNIX, learning groff with the help of cygwin on Windows XP SP3. I have downloaded groff-binaries from here, but using cygwin, I could not able to re-produce ps files. I have used following command in cygwin: $ groff grnexmpl.me >…
Cylian
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How to access man pages as structured content

I'm building a resource that references man pages, and I'm wondering if anyone knows of a way to access man pages as structured data? My current approach is to do a lot if REGEXing, but this is tedious and prone to errors. I'm not an expert on *nix,…
emersonthis
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Properly inserting code samples in man pages

I'm trying to write a man page for a software, and would like to include some code snippets. I'm currently using the .RS and .RE macros as part of a custom-made .SAMPLE macro, but for some reason that doesn't work. Here is the man page: .TH…
Meta
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How can I include a pic figure as external file in groff?

While using groff and pic it is possible to do: $ cat test.ms .TL Test .NH 1 Test Header .PS circle arrow box .PE $ cat test.ms | groff -ms -p > test.ps Which generates a valid test.ps file containing the processed figure in pic. In larger…
M.E.
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Does Groff have an updated formatting algorithm (Knuth-Plass/other)?

In the groff mission statement it says that Groff will be moving to an improved formatting algorithm. Considering that the mission statement was written in 2014; I was wondering where this was at development wise. There is nothing I've seen in the…
Maniyar
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