1groff_tmac(5) File Formats Manual groff_tmac(5)
2
6 groff_tmac - macro files in the GNU roff typesetting system
7
9 Definitions of macros, strings, and registers for use in a roff(7) doc‐
10 ument can be collected into macro files, roff input files designed to
11 produce no output themselves but instead ease the preparation of other
12 roff documents. There is no syntactical difference between a macro
13 file and any other roff document; only its purpose distinguishes it.
14 When a macro file is installed at a standard location, named according
15 to a certain convention, and suitable for use by a general audience, it
16 is termed a macro package. Macro packages can be loaded by supplying
17 the -m option to troff(1) or a groff front end.
18 Each macro package stores its macro, string, and register definitions
20 in one or more tmac files. This name originated in early Unix culture
21 as an abbreviation of “troff macros”.
22 A macro file must have a name in the form name.tmac (or tmac.name) and
24 be placed in a “tmac directory” to be loadable with the -mname option.
25 Section “Environment” of troff(1) lists these directories. Alterna‐
26 tively, a groff document requiring a macro file can load it with the
27 mso (“macro source”) request.
28 Like any other roff document, a macro file can use the “so” request
30 (“source”) to load further files relative to its own location.
31 Macro files are named for their most noteworthy application, but a
33 macro file need not define any macros. It can restrict itself to
34 defining registers and strings or invoking other groff requests. It
35 can even be empty.
36
38 Macro packages come in two varieties; those which assume responsibility
39 for page layout and other critical functions (“major” or “full-ser‐
40 vice”) and those which do not (“supplemental” or “auxiliary”). GNU
41 roff provides most major macro packages found in AT&T and BSD Unix sys‐
42 tems, an additional full-service package, and many supplemental pack‐
43 ages. Multiple full-service macro packages cannot be used by the same
44 document. Auxiliary packages can generally be freely combined, though
45 attention to their use of the groff language name spaces for identi‐
46 fiers (particularly registers, macros, strings, and diversions) should
47 be paid. Name space management was a significant challenge in AT&T
48 troff; groff's support for arbitrarily long identifiers affords few ex‐
49 cuses for name collisions, apart from attempts at compatibility with
50 the demands of historical documents.
51 Man pages
53 an
54 man an is used to compose man pages in the format originating in
55 Version 7 Unix (1979). It has a small macro interface and is
56 widely used; see groff_man(7).
57 doc
59 mdoc doc is used to compose man pages in the format originating in
60 4.3BSD-Reno (1990). It provides many more features than an, but
61 is also larger, more complex, and not as widely adopted; see
62 groff_mdoc(7).
63 Because readers of man pages often do not know in advance which macros
65 are used to format a given document, a wrapper is available.
66 andoc
68 mandoc This macro file, specific to groff, recognizes whether a docu‐
69 ment uses man or mdoc format and loads the corresponding macro
70 package. Multiple man pages, in either format, can be handled;
71 andoc reloads each macro package as necessary.
72 Full-service packages
74 The packages in this section provide a complete set of macros for writ‐
75 ing documents of any kind, up to whole books. They are similar in
76 functionality; it is a matter of taste which one to use.
77 me The classical me macro package; see groff_me(7).
79 mm The semi-classical mm macro package; see groff_mm(7).
81 mom The mom macro package, only available in groff. As this was not
83 based on other packages, it was freely designed as quite a nice,
84 modern macro package. See groff_mom(7).
85 ms The classical ms macro package; see groff_ms(7).
87 Localization packages
89 For Western languages, the localization file sets the hyphenation mode
90 and loads hyphenation patterns and exceptions. Localization files can
91 also adjust the date format and provide translations of strings used by
92 some of the full-service macro packages; alter the input encoding (see
93 the next section); and change the amount of additional inter-sentence
94 space. For Eastern languages, the localization file defines character
95 classes and sets flags on them. By default, troffrc loads the local‐
96 ization file for English.
97 trans loads localized strings used by various macro packages after
99 their localized forms have been prepared by a localization macro
100 file.
101 groff provides the following localization files.
103 cs Czech; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input en‐
105 coding to Latin-2 by loading latin2.tmac.
106 de
108 den German; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input en‐
109 coding to Latin-1 by loading latin1.tmac.
110 de.tmac selects hyphenation patterns for traditional orthogra‐
112 phy, and den.tmac does the same for the new orthography (“Recht‐
113 schreibreform”).
114 en English.
116 fr French; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input en‐
118 coding to Latin-9 by loading latin9.tmac.
119 it Italian; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms.
121 ja Japanese.
123 sv Swedish; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input en‐
125 coding to Latin-1 by loading latin1.tmac. Some of the localiza‐
126 tion of the mm package is handled separately; see groff_mmse(7).
127 zh Chinese.
129 Input encodings
131 latin1
132 latin2
133 latin5
134 latin9 are various ISO 8859 input encodings supported by groff. On
135 systems using ISO character encodings, groff loads latin1.tmac
136 automatically at startup. A document that uses Latin-2,
137 Latin-5, or Latin-9 can specify one of these alternative encod‐
138 ings.
139 cp1047 provides support for EBCDIC-based systems. On those platforms,
141 groff loads cp1047.tmac automatically at startup.
142 Because different input character codes constitute valid GNU troff in‐
144 put on ISO and EBCDIC systems, the latin macro files cannot be used on
145 EBCDIC systems, and cp1047 cannot be used on ISO systems.
146 Auxiliary packages
148 The macro packages in this section are not intended for stand-alone
149 use, but can add functionality to any other macro package or to plain
150 (“raw”) groff documents.
151 62bit provides macros for addition, multiplication, and division of
153 62-bit integers (allowing safe multiplication of signed 31-bit
154 integers, for example).
155 hdtbl allows the generation of tables using a syntax similar to the
157 HTML table model. This Heidelberger table macro package is not
158 a preprocessor, which can be useful if the contents of table en‐
159 tries are determined by macro calls or string interpolations.
160 Compare to tbl(1). It works only with the ps and pdf output de‐
161 vices. See groff_hdtbl(7).
162 papersize
164 enables the paper format to be set on the command line by giving
165 a “-d paper=format” option to troff. Possible values for format
166 are the ISO and DIN formats “A0–A6”, “B0–B6”, “C0–C6”, and
167 “D0–D6”; the U.S. formats “letter”, “legal”, “tabloid”,
168 “ledger”, “statement”, and “executive”; and the envelope formats
169 “com10”, “monarch”, and “DL”. All formats, even those for en‐
170 velopes, are in portrait orientation: the length measurement is
171 vertical. Appending “l” (ell) to any of these denotes landscape
172 orientation instead. This macro file assumes one-inch horizon‐
173 tal margins, and sets registers recognized by the groff man,
174 mdoc, mm, mom, and ms packages to configure them accordingly.
175 If you want different margins, you will need to use those pack‐
176 ages' facilities, or troff ll and/or po requests to adjust them.
177 An output device typically requires command-line options -p and
178 -l to override the paper dimensions and orientation, respec‐
179 tively, defined in its DESC file; see subsection “Paper format”
180 of groff(1). This macro file is normally loaded at startup by
181 the troffrc file when formatting for a typesetting device (but
182 not a terminal).
183 pdfpic provides a single macro, PDFPIC, to include a PDF graphic in a
185 document using features of the pdf output driver. For other
186 output devices, PDFPIC calls PSPIC, with which it shares an in‐
187 terface (see below). This macro file is normally loaded at
188 startup by the troffrc file.
189 pic supplies definitions of the macros PS, PE, and PF, usable with
191 the pic(1) preprocessor. They center each picture. Use it if
192 your document does not use a full-service macro package, or that
193 package does not supply working pic macro definitions. Except
194 for man and mdoc, those provided with groff already do so (ex‐
195 ception: mm employs the name PF for a different purpose).
196 pspic provides a macro, PSPIC, that includes a PostScript graphic in a
198 document. The ps, dvi, html, and xhtml output devices support
199 such inclusions; for all other drivers, the image is replaced
200 with a rectangular border of the same size. pspic.tmac is
201 loaded at startup by the troffrc file.
202 Its syntax is as follows.
204 .PSPIC [-L|-R|-C|-I n] file [width [height]]
206 file is the name of the PostScript file; width and height give
208 the desired width and height of the image. If neither a width
209 nor a height argument is specified, the image's natural width
210 (as given in the file's bounding box) or the current line length
211 is used as the width, whatever is smaller. The width and height
212 arguments may have scaling units attached; the default scaling
213 unit is i. PSPIC scales the graphic uniformly in the horizontal
214 and vertical directions so that it is no more than width wide
215 and height high. Option -C centers the graphic horizontally;
216 this is the default. -L and -R left- and right-align the
217 graphic, respectively. -I indents the graphic by n (with a de‐
218 fault scaling unit of m).
219 To use PSPIC within a diversion, we recommend extending it with
221 the following code, assuring that the diversion's width com‐
222 pletely covers the image's width.
223 .am PSPIC
225 . vpt 0
226 \h'(\\n[ps-offset]u + \\n[ps-deswid]u)'
227 . sp -1
228 . vpt 1
229 ..
230 Failure to load PSPIC's image argument is not an error. (The
232 psbb request does issue an error diagnostic.) To make such a
233 failure fatal, append to the pspic*error-hook macro.
234 .am pspic*error-hook
236 . ab
237 ..
238 ptx provides a macro, xx, to format permuted index entries as pro‐
240 duced by the GNU ptx(1) program. If your formatting needs dif‐
241 fer, copy the macro into your document and adapt it to your
242 needs.
243 rfc1345
245 defines special character escape sequences named for the glyph
246 mnemonics specified in RFC 1345 and the digraph table of the Vim
247 text editor. See groff_rfc1345(7).
248 sboxes offers an interface to the “pdf: background” device control com‐
250 mand supported by gropdf(1). Using this package, groff ms docu‐
251 ments can draw colored rectangles beneath any output.
252 .BOXSTART SHADED color OUTLINED color INDENT size WEIGHT size
254 begins a box, where the argument after SHADED gives the
255 fill color and that after OUTLINED the border color.
256 Omit the former to get a borderless filled box and the
257 latter for a border with no fill. The specified WEIGHT
258 is used if the box is OUTLINED.
259 INDENT precedes a value which leaves a gap between the
261 border and the contents inside the box.
262 Each color must be a defined groff color name, and each
264 size a valid groff numeric expression. The keyword/value
265 pairs can be specified in any order.
266 Boxes can be stacked, so you can start a box within another box;
268 usually the later boxes would be smaller than the containing
269 box, but this is not enforced. When using BOXSTART, the left
270 position is the current indent minus the INDENT in the command,
271 and the right position is the left position (calculated above)
272 plus the current line length and twice the indent.
273 .BOXSTOP
275 takes no parameters. It closes the most recently started
276 box at the current vertical position after adding its
277 INDENT spacing.
278 Your groff documents can conditionally exercise the sboxes
280 macros. The register GSBOX is defined if the package is loaded,
281 and interpolates a true value if the pdf output device is in
282 use.
283 sboxes furthermore hooks into the groff_ms(7) package to receive
285 notifications when footnotes are growing, so that it can close
286 boxes on a page before footnotes are printed. When that condi‐
287 tion obtains, sboxes will close open boxes two points above the
288 footnote separator and re-open them on the next page. (This
289 amount probably will not match the box's INDENT.)
290 See “Using PDF boxes with groff and the ms macros” ⟨file:///usr/
292 share/doc/groff/msboxes.pdf⟩ for a demonstration.
293 trace aids the debugging of groff documents by tracing macro calls.
295 See groff_trace(7).
296 www defines macros corresponding to HTML elements. See
298 groff_www(7).
299
301 AT&T nroff and troff were implemented before the conventions of the
302 modern C getopt(3) call evolved, and used a naming scheme for macro
303 packages that looks odd to modern eyes. Macro packages were typically
304 loaded using the -m option to the formatter; when directly followed by
305 its argument without an intervening space, this looked like a long op‐
306 tion preceded by a single minus—a sensation in the computer stone age.
307 Macro packages therefore came to be known by names that started with
308 the letter “m”, which was omitted from the name of the macro file as
309 stored on disk. For example, the manuscript macro package was stored
310 as tmac.s and loaded with the option -ms.
311 groff commands permit space between an option and its argument. The
313 syntax “groff -m s” makes the macro file name more clear but may sur‐
314 prise users familiar with the original convention, unaware that the
315 package's “real” name was “s” all along. For such packages of long
316 pedigree, groff accommodates different users' expectations by supplying
317 wrapper macro files that load the desired file with mso requests.
318 Thus, all of “groff -m s”, “groff -m ms”, “groff -ms”, and “groff -mms”
319 serve to load the manuscript macros.
320 Wrappers are not provided for packages of more recent vintage, like
322 www.tmac.
323 As noted in passing above, AT&T troff named macro files in the form
325 tmac.name. It has since become conventional in operating systems to
326 use a suffixed file name extension to suggest a file type or format.
327
329 The traditional method of employing a macro package is to specify the
330 -m package option to the formatter, which then reads package's macro
331 file prior to any input files. Historically, package was sought in a
332 file named tmac.package (that is, with a “tmac.” prefix). GNU troff
333 searches for package.tmac in the macro path; if not found, it looks for
334 tmac.package instead, and vice versa.
335 Alternatively, one could include a macro file by using the request “.so
337 file-name” in the document; file-name is resolved relative to the loca‐
338 tion of the input document. GNU troff offers an improved feature in
339 the similar request “mso package-file-name”, which searches the macro
340 path for package-file-name. Because its argument is a file name, its
341 “.tmac” component must be included for the file to be found; however,
342 as a convenience, if opening it fails, mso strips any such suffix and
343 tries again with a “tmac.” prefix, and vice versa.
344 If a sourced file requires preprocessing, for example if it includes
346 tbl tables or eqn equations, the preprocessor soelim(1) must be used.
347 This can be achieved with a pipeline or, in groff, by specifying the -s
348 option to the formatter (or front end). man(1) librarian programs gen‐
349 erally call soelim automatically. (Macro packages themselves generally
350 do not require preprocessing.)
351
353 A roff(7) document is a text file that is enriched by predefined for‐
354 matting constructs, such as requests, escape sequences, strings, nu‐
355 meric registers, and macros from a macro package. These elements are
356 described in roff(7).
357 To give a document a personal style, it is most useful to extend the
359 existing elements by defining some macros for repeating tasks; the best
360 place for this is near the beginning of the document or in a separate
361 file.
362 Macros without arguments are just like strings. But the full power of
364 macros occurs when arguments are passed with a macro call. Within the
365 macro definition, the arguments are available as the escape sequences
366 \$1, ..., \$9, \$[...], \$*, and \$@, the name under which the macro
367 was called is in \$0, and the number of arguments is in register
368 \n[.$]; see groff(7).
369 Draft mode
371 Writing groff macros is easy when the escaping mechanism is temporarily
372 disabled. In groff, this is done by enclosing the macro definition(s)
373 within a pair of .eo and .ec requests. Then the body in the macro def‐
374 inition is just like a normal part of the document — text enhanced by
375 calls of requests, macros, strings, registers, etc. For example, the
376 code above can be written in a simpler way by
377 .eo
379 .ds midpart was called with the following
380 .de print_args
381 \f[I]\$0\f[] \*[midpart] \n[.$] arguments:
382 \$*
383 ..
384 .ec
385 Unfortunately, draft mode cannot be used universally. Although it is
387 good enough for defining normal macros, draft mode fails with advanced
388 applications, such as indirectly defined strings, registers, etc. An
389 optimal way is to define and test all macros in draft mode and then do
390 the backslash doubling as a final step; do not forget to remove the .eo
391 request.
392 Tips for macro definitions
394 • Start every line with a dot, for example, by using the groff re‐
395 quest .nop for text lines, or write your own macro that handles
396 also text lines with a leading dot.
397 .de Text
399 . if (\\n[.$] == 0) \
400 . return
401 . nop \)\\$*\)
402 ..
403 • Write a comment macro that works both for copy and draft modes;
405 since the escape character is off in draft mode, trouble might
406 occur when comment escape sequences are used. For example, the
407 following macro just ignores its arguments, so it acts like a
408 comment line:
409 .de c
411 ..
412 .c This is like a comment line.
413 • In long macro definitions, make ample use of comment lines or
415 almost-empty lines (this is, lines which have a leading dot and
416 nothing else) for a better structuring.
417 • To increase readability, use groff's indentation facility for
419 requests and macro calls (arbitrary whitespace after the leading
420 dot).
421 Diversions
423 Diversions can be used to implement quite advanced programming con‐
424 structs. They are comparable to pointers to large data structures in
425 the C programming language, but their usage is quite different.
426 In their simplest form, diversions are multi-line strings, but diver‐
428 sions get their power when used dynamically within macros. The (for‐
429 matted) information stored in a diversion can be retrieved by calling
430 the diversion just like a macro.
431 Most of the problems arising with diversions can be avoided if you re‐
433 member that diversions always store complete lines. Using diversions
434 when the line buffer has not been flushed produces strange results; not
435 knowing this, many people get desperate about diversions. To ensure
436 that a diversion works, add line breaks at the right places. To be
437 safe, enclose everything that has to do with diversions within a pair
438 of line breaks; for example, by explicitly using .br requests. This
439 rule should be applied to diversion definition, both inside and out‐
440 side, and to all calls of diversions. This is a bit of overkill, but
441 it works nicely.
442 (If you really need diversions which should ignore the current partial
444 line, use environments to save the current partial line and/or use the
445 .box request.)
446 The most powerful feature using diversions is to start a diversion
448 within a macro definition and end it within another macro. Then every‐
449 thing between each call of this macro pair is stored within the diver‐
450 sion and can be manipulated from within the macros.
451
453 This document was written by Bernd Warken ⟨groff-bernd.warken-72@web
454 .de⟩, Werner Lemberg ⟨wl@gnu.org⟩, and G. Branden Robinson ⟨g.branden
455 .robinson@gmail.com⟩.
456
458 Groff: The GNU Implementation of troff, by Trent A. Fisher and Werner
459 Lemberg, is the primary groff manual. You can browse it interactively
460 with “info groff”.
461 The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard ⟨https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/
463 lsb/fhs⟩ is maintained by the Linux Foundation.
464 groff(1)
466 is an overview of the groff system.
467 groff_man(7),
469 groff_mdoc(7),
470 groff_me(7),
471 groff_mm(7),
472 groff_mom(7),
473 groff_ms(7),
474 groff_rfc1345(7),
475 groff_trace(7),
476 and
477 groff_www(7)
478 are groff macro packages.
479 groff(7)
481 summarizes the language recognized by GNU troff.
482 troff(1)
484 documents the default macro file search path.
485groff 1.23.0 2 November 2023 groff_tmac(5)