grops(1) — Linux manual page

Name | Synopsis | Description | Options | Usage | Font installation | Old fonts | Environment | Files | See also | COLOPHON

grops(1)                 General Commands Manual                grops(1)

Name         top

       grops - groff output driver for PostScript

Synopsis         top

       grops [-glm] [-b brokenness-flags] [-c num-copies] [-F font-
             directory] [-I inclusion-directory] [-p paper-format]
             [-P prologue-file] [-w rule-thickness] [file ...]

       grops --help

       grops -v
       grops --version

Description         top

       The GNU roff PostScript output driver translates the output of
       troff(1) into PostScript.  Normally, grops is invoked by groff(1)
       when the latter is given the “-T ps” option.  (In this
       installation, ps is the default output device.)  Use groff's -P
       option to pass any options shown above to grops.  If no file
       arguments are given, or if file is “-”, grotty reads the standard
       input stream.  It writes to the standard output stream.

       When called with multiple file arguments, grops doesn't produce a
       valid document structure (one conforming to the Document
       Structuring Conventions).  To print such concatenated output, it
       is necessary to deactivate DSC handling in the printing program
       or previewer.

       See section “Font installation” below for a guide to installing
       fonts for grops.

Options         top

       --help displays a usage message, while -v and --version show
       version information; all exit afterward.

       -b n   Work around problems with spoolers, previewers, and older
              printers.  Normally, grops produces output at PostScript
              LanguageLevel 2 that conforms to version 3.0 of the
              Document Structuring Conventions.  Some software and
              devices can't handle such a data stream.  The value of n
              determines what grops does to make its output acceptable
              to such consumers.  If n is 0, grops employs no
              workarounds, which is the default; it can be changed by
              modifying the broken directive in grops's DESC file.

              Add 1 to suppress generation of %%BeginDocumentSetup and
              %%EndDocumentSetup comments; this is needed for early
              versions of TranScript that get confused by anything
              between the %%EndProlog comment and the first %%Page
              comment.

              Add 2 to omit lines in included files beginning with %!,
              which confuse Sun's pageview previewer.

              Add 4 to omit lines in included files beginning with
              %%Page, %%Trailer and %%EndProlog; this is needed for
              spoolers that don't understand %%BeginDocument and %%End‐
              Document comments.

              Add 8 to write %!PS-Adobe-2.0 rather than %!PS-Adobe-3.0
              as the first line of the PostScript output; this is needed
              when using Sun's Newsprint with a printer that requires
              page reversal.

              Add 16 to omit media size information (that is, output
              neither a %%DocumentMedia comment nor the setpagedevice
              PostScript command).  This was the behavior of groff
              1.18.1 and earlier; it is needed for older printers that
              don't understand PostScript LanguageLevel 2, and is also
              necessary if the output is further processed to produce an
              EPS file; see subsection “Escapsulated PostScript” below.

       -c n   Output n copies of each page.

       -F dir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for font
              and device description and PostScript prologue files; name
              is the name of the device, usually ps.

       -g     Generate PostScript code to guess the page length.  The
              guess is correct only if the imageable area is vertically
              centered on the page.  This option allows you to generate
              documents that can be printed on both U.S. letter and A4
              paper formats without change.

       -I dir Search the directory dir for files named in \X'ps: file'
              and \X'ps: import' escape sequences.  -I may be specified
              more than once; each dir is searched in the given order.
              To search the current working directory before others, add
              “-I .” at the desired place; it is otherwise searched
              last.

       -l     Use landscape orientation rather than portrait.

       -m     Turn on manual feed for the document.

       -p fmt Set physical dimensions of output medium, overriding the
              papersize, paperlength, and paperwidth directives in the
              DESC file.  fmt can be any argument accepted by the
              papersize directive; see groff_font(5).

       -P prologue
              Use the file prologue, sought in the groff font search
              path, as the PostScript prologue, overriding the default
              (see section “Files” below) and the environment variable
              GROPS_PROLOGUE.

       -w n   Draw rules (lines) with a thickness of n thousandths of an
              em.  The default thickness is 40 (0.04 em).

Usage         top

       The input to grops must be in the format output by troff(1),
       described in groff_out(5).  In addition, the device and font
       description files for the device used must meet certain
       requirements.  The device resolution must be an integer multiple
       of 72 times the sizescale.  The device description file must
       contain a valid paper format; see groff_font(5).  Each font
       description file must contain a directive
              internalname psname
       which says that the PostScript name of the font is psname.

       A font description file may also contain a directive
              encoding enc-file
       which says that the PostScript font should be reencoded using the
       encoding described in enc-file; this file should consist of a
       sequence of lines of the form
              pschar code
       where pschar is the PostScript name of the character, and code is
       its position in the encoding expressed as a decimal integer;
       valid values are in the range 0 to 255.  Lines starting with #
       and blank lines are ignored.  The code for each character given
       in the font description file must correspond to the code for the
       character in encoding file, or to the code in the default
       encoding for the font if the PostScript font is not to be
       reencoded.  This code can be used with the \N escape sequence in
       troff to select the character, even if it does not have a groff
       glyph name.  Every character in the font description file must
       exist in the PostScript font, and the widths given in the font
       description file must match the widths used in the PostScript
       font.  grops assumes that a character with a groff name of space
       is blank (makes no marks on the page); it can make use of such a
       character to generate more efficient and compact PostScript
       output.

       grops is able to display all glyphs in a PostScript font; it is
       not limited to 256 of them.  enc-file (or the default encoding if
       no encoding file is specified) just defines the order of glyphs
       for the first 256 characters; all other glyphs are accessed with
       additional encoding vectors which grops produces on the fly.

       grops can embed fonts in a document that are necessary to render
       it; this is called “downloading”.  Such fonts must be in PFA
       format.  Use pfbtops(1) to convert a Type 1 font in PFB format.
       Downloadable fonts must be listed a download file containing
       lines of the form
              psname file
       where psname is the PostScript name of the font, and file is the
       name of the file containing it.  Blank lines and those beginning
       with # are ignored; fields may be separated by tabs or spaces.
       file is sought using the same mechanism as for groff font
       description files.  The download file itself is as well;
       currently, the first matching file found in the device and font
       description search path is used.

       If the file containing a downloadable font or imported document
       conforms to the Adobe Document Structuring Conventions, then
       grops interprets any comments in the files sufficiently to ensure
       that its own output is conforming.  It also supplies any needed
       font resources that are listed in the download file as well as
       any needed file resources.  It is also able to handle inter-
       resource dependencies.  For example, suppose that you have a
       downloadable font called Garamond, and also a downloadable font
       called Garamond-Outline which depends on Garamond (typically it
       would be defined to copy Garamond's font dictionary, and change
       the PaintType), then it is necessary for Garamond to appear
       before Garamond-Outline in the PostScript document.  grops
       handles this automatically provided that the downloadable font
       file for Garamond-Outline indicates its dependence on Garamond by
       means of the Document Structuring Conventions, for example by
       beginning with the following lines.
              %!PS-Adobe-3.0 Resource-Font
              %%DocumentNeededResources: font Garamond
              %%EndComments
              %%IncludeResource: font Garamond
       In this case, both Garamond and Garamond-Outline would need to be
       listed in the download file.  A downloadable font should not
       include its own name in a %%DocumentSuppliedResources comment.

       grops does not interpret %%DocumentFonts comments.  The
       %%DocumentNeededResources, %%DocumentSuppliedResources,
       %%IncludeResource, %%BeginResource, and %%EndResource comments
       (or possibly the old %%DocumentNeededFonts, %%DocumentSupplied‐
       Fonts, %%IncludeFont, %%BeginFont, and %%EndFont comments) should
       be used.

       The default stroke and fill colors are black.  For colors defined
       in the “rgb” color space, setrgbcolor is used; for “cmy” and
       “cmyk”, setcmykcolor; and for “gray”, setgray.  setcmykcolor is a
       PostScript LanguageLevel 2 command and thus not available on some
       older printers.

   Typefaces
       Styles called R, I, B, and BI mounted at font positions 1 to 4.
       Text fonts are grouped into families A, BM, C, H, HN, N, P,
       and T, each having members in each of these styles.

              AR     AvantGarde-Book
              AI     AvantGarde-BookOblique
              AB     AvantGarde-Demi
              ABI    AvantGarde-DemiOblique
              BMR    Bookman-Light
              BMI    Bookman-LightItalic
              BMB    Bookman-Demi
              BMBI   Bookman-DemiItalic
              CR     Courier
              CI     Courier-Oblique
              CB     Courier-Bold
              CBI    Courier-BoldOblique
              HR     Helvetica
              HI     Helvetica-Oblique
              HB     Helvetica-Bold
              HBI    Helvetica-BoldOblique
              HNR    Helvetica-Narrow
              HNI    Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique
              HNB    Helvetica-Narrow-Bold
              HNBI   Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique
              NR     NewCenturySchlbk-Roman
              NI     NewCenturySchlbk-Italic
              NB     NewCenturySchlbk-Bold
              NBI    NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic
              PR     Palatino-Roman
              PI     Palatino-Italic
              PB     Palatino-Bold
              PBI    Palatino-BoldItalic
              TR     Times-Roman
              TI     Times-Italic
              TB     Times-Bold
              TBI    Times-BoldItalic

       Another text font is not a member of a family.

              ZCMI   ZapfChancery-MediumItalic

       Special fonts include S, the PostScript Symbol font; ZD, Zapf
       Dingbats; SS (slanted symbol), which contains oblique forms of
       lowercase Greek letters derived from Symbol; EURO, which offers a
       Euro glyph for use with old devices lacking it; and ZDR, a
       reversed version of Zapf Dingbats (with symbols flipped about the
       vertical axis).  Most glyphs in these fonts are unnamed and must
       be accessed using \N.  The last three are not standard PostScript
       fonts, but supplied by groff and therefore included in the
       default download file.

   Device control commands
       grops recognizes device control commands produced by the \X
       escape sequence, but interprets only those that begin with a
       “ps:” tag.

       \X'ps: exec code'
              Execute the arbitrary PostScript commands code.  The
              PostScript currentpoint is set to the groff drawing
              position when the \X escape sequence is interpreted before
              executing code.  The origin is at the top left corner of
              the page; x coordinates increase to the right, and
              y coordinates down the page.  A procedure u is defined
              that converts groff basic units to the coordinate system
              in effect (provided the user doesn't change the scale).
              For example,
                     .nr x 1i
                     \X'ps: exec \nx u 0 rlineto stroke'
              draws a horizontal line one inch long.  code may make
              changes to the graphics state, but any changes persist
              only to the end of the page.  A dictionary containing the
              definitions specified by the def and mdef commands is on
              top of the dictionary stack.  If your code adds
              definitions to this dictionary, you should allocate space
              for them using “\X'ps: mdef n'”.  Any definitions persist
              only until the end of the page.  If you use the \Y escape
              sequence with an argument that names a macro, code can
              extend over multiple lines.  For example,
                     .nr x 1i
                     .de y
                     ps: exec
                     \nx u 0 rlineto
                     stroke
                     ..
                     \Yy
              is another way to draw a horizontal line one inch long.
              The single backslash before “nx”—the only reason to use a
              register while defining the macro “y”—is to convert a
              user-specified dimension “1i” to groff basic units which
              are in turn converted to PostScript units with the u
              procedure.

              grops wraps user-specified PostScript code into a
              dictionary, nothing more.  In particular, it doesn't start
              and end the inserted code with save and restore,
              respectively.  This must be supplied by the user, if
              necessary.

       \X'ps: file name'
              This is the same as the exec command except that the
              PostScript code is read from file name.

       \X'ps: def code'
              Place a PostScript definition contained in code in the
              prologue.  There should be at most one definition per \X
              command.  Long definitions can be split over several \X
              commands; all the code arguments are simply joined
              together separated by newlines.  The definitions are
              placed in a dictionary which is automatically pushed on
              the dictionary stack when an exec command is executed.  If
              you use the \Y escape sequence with an argument that names
              a macro, code can extend over multiple lines.

       \X'ps: mdef n code'
              Like def, except that code may contain up to
              n definitions.  grops needs to know how many definitions
              code contains so that it can create an appropriately sized
              PostScript dictionary to contain them.

       \X'ps: import file llx lly urx ury width [height]'
              Import a PostScript graphic from file.  The arguments llx,
              lly, urx, and ury give the bounding box of the graphic in
              the default PostScript coordinate system.  They should all
              be integers: llx and lly are the x and y coordinates of
              the lower left corner of the graphic; urx and ury are the
              x and y coordinates of the upper right corner of the
              graphic; width and height are integers that give the
              desired width and height in groff basic units of the
              graphic.

              The graphic is scaled so that it has this width and height
              and translated so that the lower left corner of the
              graphic is located at the position associated with \X
              command.  If the height argument is omitted it is scaled
              uniformly in the x and y axes so that it has the specified
              width.

              The contents of the \X command are not interpreted by
              troff, so vertical space for the graphic is not
              automatically added, and the width and height arguments
              are not allowed to have attached scaling indicators.

              If the PostScript file complies with the Adobe Document
              Structuring Conventions and contains a %%BoundingBox
              comment, then the bounding box can be automatically
              extracted from within groff input by using the psbb
              request.

              See groff_tmac(5) for a description of the PSPIC macro
              which provides a convenient high-level interface for
              inclusion of PostScript graphics.

       \X'ps: invis'
       \X'ps: endinvis'
              No output is generated for text and drawing commands that
              are bracketed with these \X commands.  These commands are
              intended for use when output from troff is previewed
              before being processed with grops; if the previewer is
              unable to display certain characters or other constructs,
              then other substitute characters or constructs can be used
              for previewing by bracketing them with these \X commands.

              For example, gxditview is not able to display a proper
              \[em] character because the standard X11 fonts do not
              provide it; this problem can be overcome by executing the
              following request

                     .char \[em] \X'ps: invis'\
                     \Z'\v'-.25m'\h'.05m'\D'l .9m 0'\h'.05m''\
                     \X'ps: endinvis'\[em]

              In this case, gxditview is unable to display the \[em]
              character and draws the line, whereas grops prints the
              \[em] character and ignores the line (this code is already
              in file Xps.tmac, which is loaded if a document intended
              for grops is previewed with gxditview).

       If a PostScript procedure BPhook has been defined via a “ps: def”
       or “ps: mdef” device control command, it is executed at the
       beginning of every page (before anything is drawn or written by
       groff).  For example, to underlay the page contents with the word
       “DRAFT” in light gray, you might use

              .de XX
              ps: def
              /BPhook
              { gsave .9 setgray clippath pathbbox exch 2 copy
                .5 mul exch .5 mul translate atan rotate pop pop
                /NewCenturySchlbk-Roman findfont 200 scalefont setfont
                (DRAFT) dup stringwidth pop -.5 mul -70 moveto show
                grestore }
              def
              ..
              .devicem XX

       Or, to cause lines and polygons to be drawn with square linecaps
       and mitered linejoins instead of the round linecaps and linejoins
       normally used by grops, use
              .de XX
              ps: def
              /BPhook { 2 setlinecap 0 setlinejoin } def
              ..
              .devicem XX
       (square linecaps, as opposed to butt linecaps (“0 setlinecap”),
       give true corners in boxed tables even though the lines are drawn
       unconnected).

   Encapsulated PostScript
       grops itself doesn't emit bounding box information.  The
       following script, groff2eps, produces an EPS file.

              #!/bin/sh
              groff -P-b16 "$1" > "$1".ps
              gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=bbox -- "$1".ps 2> "$1".bbox
              sed -e "/^%%Orientation/r $1.bbox" \
                  -e "/^%!PS-Adobe-3.0/s/$/ EPSF-3.0/" "$1".ps > "$1".eps
              rm "$1".ps "$1".bbox

       You can then use “groff2eps foo” to convert file foo to foo.eps.

   TrueType and other font formats
       TrueType fonts can be used with grops if converted first to
       Type 42 format, a PostScript wrapper equivalent to the PFA format
       described in pfbtops(1).  Several methods exist to generate a
       Type 42 wrapper; some of them involve the use of a PostScript
       interpreter such as Ghostscript—see gs(1).

       One approach is to use FontForge ⟨https://fontforge.org/⟩, a font
       editor that can convert most outline font formats.  Here's an
       example of using the Roboto Slab Serif font with groff.  Several
       variables are used so that you can more easily adapt it into your
       own script.

           MAP=/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/generate/text.map
           TTF=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/roboto/slab/RobotoSlab-Regular.ttf
           BASE=$(basename "$TTF")
           INT=${BASE%.ttf}
           PFA=$INT.pfa
           AFM=$INT.afm
           GFN=RSR
           DIR=$HOME/.local/groff/font
           mkdir -p "$DIR"/devps
           fontforge -lang=ff -c "Open(\"$TTF\");\
           Generate(\"$DIR/devps/$PFA\");"
           afmtodit "$DIR/devps/$AFM" "$MAP" "$DIR/devps/$GFN"
           printf "$BASE\t$PFA\n" >> "$DIR/devps/download"

       fontforge and afmtodit may generate warnings depending on the
       attributes of the font.  The test procedure is simple.

           printf ".ft RSR\nHello, world!\n" | groff -F "$DIR" > hello.ps

       Once you're satisfied that the font works, you may want to
       generate any available related styles (for instance, Roboto Slab
       also has “Bold”, “Light”, and “Thin” styles) and set up
       GROFF_FONT_PATH in your environment to include the directory you
       keep the generated fonts in so that you don't have to use the -F
       option.

Font installation         top

       The following is a step-by-step font installation guide for
       grops.

       •  Convert your font to something groff understands.  This is a
          PostScript Type 1 font in PFA format or a PostScript Type 42
          font, together with an AFM file.  A PFA file begins as
          follows.
                 %!PS-AdobeFont-1.0:
          A PFB file contains this string as well, preceded by some non-
          printing bytes.  If your font is in PFB format, use groff's
          pfbtops(1) program to convert it to PFA.  For TrueType and
          other font formats, we recommend fontforge, which can convert
          most outline font formats.  A Type 42 font file begins as
          follows.
                 %!PS-TrueTypeFont
          This is a wrapper format for TrueType fonts.  Old PostScript
          printers might not support them (that is, they might not have
          a built-in TrueType font interpreter).  In the following
          steps, we will consider the use of CTAN's BrushScriptX-Italic
          ⟨https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/brushscr⟩ font in PFA
          format.

       •  Convert the AFM file to a groff font description file with the
          afmtodit(1) program.  For instance,
                 $ afmtodit BrushScriptX-Italic.afm text.map BSI
          converts the Adobe Font Metric file BrushScriptX-Italic.afm to
          the groff font description file BSI.

          If you have a font family which provides regular upright
          (roman), bold, italic, and bold-italic styles (where “italic”
          may be “oblique” or “slanted”), we recommend using the letters
          R, B, I, and BI, respectively, as suffixes to the groff font
          family name to enable groff's font family and style selection
          features.  An example is groff's built-in support for Times:
          the font family name is abbreviated as T, and the groff font
          names are therefore TR, TB, TI, and TBI.  In our example,
          however, the BrushScriptX font is available in a single style
          only, italic.

       •  Install the groff font description file(s) in a devps
          subdirectory in the search path that groff uses for device and
          font file descriptions.  See the GROFF_FONT_PATH entry in
          section “Environment” of troff(1) for the current value of the
          font search path.  While groff doesn't directly use AFM files,
          it is a good idea to store them alongside its font description
          files.

       •  Register fonts in the devps/download file so they can be
          located for embedding in PostScript files grops generates.
          Only the first download file encountered in the font search
          path is read.  If in doubt, copy the default download file
          (see section “Files” below) to the first directory in the font
          search path and add your fonts there.  The PostScript font
          name used by grops is stored in the internalname field in the
          groff font description file.  (This name does not necessarily
          resemble the font's file name.)  We add the following line to
          download.
                 BrushScriptX-Italic→BrushScriptX-Italic.pfa
          A tab character, depicted as →, separates the fields.

       •  Test the selection and embedding of the new font.
                 printf "\\f[BSI]Hello, world!\n" | groff -T ps -P -e >hello.ps
                 see hello.pdf

Old fonts         top

       groff versions 1.19.2 and earlier contained descriptions of a
       slightly different set of the base 35 PostScript level 2 fonts
       defined by Adobe.  The older set has 229 glyphs and a larger set
       of kerning pairs; the newer one has 314 glyphs, including the
       Euro sign.  For backwards compatibility, these old font
       descriptions are also installed in the /usr/local/share/groff/
       1.23.0/oldfont/devps directory.

       To use them, make sure that grops finds the fonts before the
       default system fonts (with the same names): either give grops the
       -F command-line option,
              $ groff -Tps -P-F -P/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/oldfont ...
       or add the directory to groff's font and device description
       search path environment variable,
              $ GROFF_FONT_PATH=/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/oldfont \
                     groff -Tps ...
       when the command runs.

Environment         top

       GROFF_FONT_PATH
              A list of directories in which to seek the selected output
              device's directory of device and font description files.
              See troff(1) and groff_font(5).

       GROPS_PROLOGUE
              If this is set to foo, then grops uses the file foo (in
              the font path) instead of the default prologue file
              prologue.  The option -P overrides this environment
              variable.

       SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
              A timestamp (expressed as seconds since the Unix epoch) to
              use as the output creation timestamp in place of the
              current time.  The time is converted to human-readable
              form using gmtime(3) and asctime(3), and recorded in a
              PostScript comment.

       TZ     The time zone to use when converting the current time to
              human-readable form; see tzset(3).  If SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
              is used, it is always converted to human-readable form
              using UTC.

Files         top

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/DESC
              describes the ps output device.

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/F
              describes the font known as F on device ps.

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/download
              lists fonts available for embedding within the PostScript
              document (or download to the device).

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/prologue
              is the default PostScript prologue prefixed to every
              output file.

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/text.enc
              describes the encoding scheme used by most PostScript
              Type 1 fonts; the encoding directive of font description
              files for the ps device refers to it.

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/ps.tmac
              defines macros for use with the ps output device.  It is
              automatically loaded by troffrc when the ps output device
              is selected.

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/pspic.tmac
              defines the PSPIC macro for embedding images in a
              document; see groff_tmac(5).  It is automatically loaded
              by troffrc.

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/psold.tmac
              provides replacement glyphs for text fonts that lack
              complete coverage of the ISO Latin-1 character set; using
              it, groff can produce glyphs like eth (ð) and thorn (þ)
              that older PostScript printers do not natively support.

       grops creates temporary files using the template “gropsXXXXXX”;
       see groff(1) for details on their storage location.

See also         top

       PostScript Language Document Structuring Conventions
       Specification ⟨http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/ps/
       5001.DSC_Spec.pdf⟩

       afmtodit(1), groff(1), troff(1), pfbtops(1), groff_char(7),
       groff_font(5), groff_out(5), groff_tmac(5)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the groff (GNU troff) project.  Information
       about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/groff.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2023-12-08.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

groff 1.23.0.453-330f9-dirty 1 November 2023                    grops(1)