1GROPS(1) General Commands Manual GROPS(1)
2
6 grops - PostScript driver for groff
7
9 grops [-glmv] [-b n] [-c n] [-F dir] [-I dir] [-p papersize]
10 [-P prologue] [-w n] [files ...]
11
13 grops translates the output of GNU troff to PostScript. Normally grops
14 should be invoked by using the groff command with a -Tps option.
15 (Actually, this is the default for groff.) If no files are given,
16 grops reads the standard input. A filename of - also causes grops to
17 read the standard input. PostScript output is written to the standard
18 output. When grops is run by groff options can be passed to grops
19 using groff's -P option.
20 Note that grops doesn't produce a valid document structure (conforming
22 to the Document Structuring Convention) if called with multiple file
23 arguments. To print such concatenated output it is necessary to deac‐
24 tivate DSC handling in the printing program or previewer. See section
25 FONT INSTALLATION below for a guide how to install fonts for grops.
26
28 It is possible to have whitespace between a command line option and its
29 parameter.
30 -bn Provide workarounds for older printers, broken spoolers, and
32 previewers. Normally grops produces output at PostScript Lan‐
33 guageLevel 2 that conforms to the Document Structuring Conven‐
34 tions version 3.0. Some older printers, spoolers, and preview‐
35 ers can't handle such output. The value of n controls what
36 grops does to make its output acceptable to such programs. A
37 value of 0 causes grops not to employ any workarounds.
38 Add 1 if no %%BeginDocumentSetup and %%EndDocumentSetup comments
40 should be generated; this is needed for early versions of Tran‐
41 Script that get confused by anything between the %%EndProlog
42 comment and the first %%Page comment.
43 Add 2 if lines in included files beginning with %! should be
45 stripped out; this is needed for Sun's pageview previewer.
46 Add 4 if %%Page, %%Trailer and %%EndProlog comments should be
48 stripped out of included files; this is needed for spoolers that
49 don't understand the %%BeginDocument and %%EndDocument comments.
50 Add 8 if the first line of the PostScript output should be %!PS-
52 Adobe-2.0 rather than %!PS-Adobe-3.0; this is needed when using
53 Sun's Newsprint with a printer that requires page reversal.
54 Add 16 if no media size information should be included in the
56 document (this is, neither use %%DocumentMedia nor the set‐
57 pagedevice PostScript command). This was the behaviour of groff
58 version 1.18.1 and earlier; it is needed for older printers
59 which don't understand PostScript LanguageLevel 2. It is also
60 necessary if the output is further processed to get an encapsu‐
61 lated PS (EPS) file – see below.
62 The default value can be specified by a
64 broken n
66 command in the DESC file. Otherwise the default value is 0.
68 -cn Print n copies of each page.
70 -Fdir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for prologue,
72 font, and device description files; name is the name of the
73 device, usually ps.
74 -g Guess the page length. This generates PostScript code that
76 guesses the page length. The guess is correct only if the
77 imageable area is vertically centered on the page. This option
78 allows you to generate documents that can be printed both on
79 letter (8.5×11) paper and on A4 paper without change.
80 -Idir This option may be used to add a directory to the search path
82 for files on the command line and files named in \X'ps: import'
83 and \X'ps: file' escapes. The search path is initialized with
84 the current directory. This option may be specified more than
85 once; the directories are then searched in the order specified
86 (but before the current directory). If you want to make the
87 current directory be read before other directories, add -I. at
88 the appropriate place.
89 No directory search is performed for files with an absolute file
91 name.
92 -l Print the document in landscape format.
94 -m Turn manual feed on for the document.
96 -ppaper-size
98 Set physical dimension of output medium. This overrides the
99 papersize, paperlength, and paperwidth commands in the DESC
100 file; it accepts the same arguments as the papersize command.
101 See groff_font (5) for details.
102 -Pprologue-file
104 Use the file prologue-file (in the font path) as the prologue
105 instead of the default prologue file prologue. This option
106 overrides the environment variable GROPS_PROLOGUE.
107 -wn Lines should be drawn using a thickness of n thousandths of an
109 em. If this option is not given, the line thickness defaults to
110 0.04 em.
111 -v Print the version number.
113
115 The input to grops must be in the format output by troff(1). This is
116 described in groff_out(5).
117 In addition, the device and font description files for the device used
119 must meet certain requirements: The resolution must be an integer mul‐
120 tiple of 72 times the sizescale. The ps device uses a resolution of
121 72000 and a sizescale of 1000.
122 The device description file must contain a valid paper size; see
124 groff_font(5) for more information.
125 Each font description file must contain a command
127 internalname psname
129 which says that the PostScript name of the font is psname. It may also
131 contain a command
132 encoding enc_file
134 which says that the PostScript font should be reencoded using the
136 encoding described in enc_file; this file should consist of a sequence
137 of lines of the form:
138 pschar code
140 where pschar is the PostScript name of the character, and code is its
142 position in the encoding expressed as a decimal integer; valid values
143 are in the range 0 to 255. Lines starting with # and blank lines are
144 ignored. The code for each character given in the font file must cor‐
145 respond to the code for the character in encoding file, or to the code
146 in the default encoding for the font if the PostScript font is not to
147 be reencoded. This code can be used with the \N escape sequence in
148 troff to select the character, even if the character does not have a
149 groff name. Every character in the font file must exist in the Post‐
150 Script font, and the widths given in the font file must match the
151 widths used in the PostScript font. grops assumes that a character
152 with a groff name of space is blank (makes no marks on the page); it
153 can make use of such a character to generate more efficient and compact
154 PostScript output.
155 Note that grops is able to display all glyphs in a PostScript font, not
157 only 256. enc_file (or the default encoding if no encoding file speci‐
158 fied) just defines the order of glyphs for the first 256 characters;
159 all other glyphs are accessed with additional encoding vectors which
160 grops produces on the fly.
161 grops can automatically include the downloadable fonts necessary to
163 print the document. Such fonts must be in PFA format. Use pfbtops(1)
164 to convert a Type 1 font in PFB format. Any downloadable fonts which
165 should, when required, be included by grops must be listed in the file
166 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/font/devps/download; this should consist of
167 lines of the form
168 font filename
170 where font is the PostScript name of the font, and filename is the name
172 of the file containing the font; lines beginning with # and blank lines
173 are ignored; fields may be separated by tabs or spaces; filename is
174 searched for using the same mechanism that is used for groff font met‐
175 ric files. The download file itself is also searched for using this
176 mechanism; currently, only the first found file in the font path is
177 used.
178 If the file containing a downloadable font or imported document con‐
180 forms to the Adobe Document Structuring Conventions, then grops inter‐
181 prets any comments in the files sufficiently to ensure that its own
182 output is conforming. It also supplies any needed font resources that
183 are listed in the download file as well as any needed file resources.
184 It is also able to handle inter-resource dependencies. For example,
185 suppose that you have a downloadable font called Garamond, and also a
186 downloadable font called Garamond-Outline which depends on Garamond
187 (typically it would be defined to copy Garamond's font dictionary, and
188 change the PaintType), then it is necessary for Garamond to appear
189 before Garamond-Outline in the PostScript document. grops handles this
190 automatically provided that the downloadable font file for Garamond-
191 Outline indicates its dependence on Garamond by means of the Document
192 Structuring Conventions, for example by beginning with the following
193 lines
194 %!PS-Adobe-3.0 Resource-Font
196 %%DocumentNeededResources: font Garamond
197 %%EndComments
198 %%IncludeResource: font Garamond
199 In this case both Garamond and Garamond-Outline would need to be listed
201 in the download file. A downloadable font should not include its own
202 name in a %%DocumentSuppliedResources comment.
203 grops does not interpret %%DocumentFonts comments. The %%Document‐
205 NeededResources, %%DocumentSuppliedResources, %%IncludeResource,
206 %%BeginResource, and %%EndResource comments (or possibly the old
207 %%DocumentNeededFonts, %%DocumentSuppliedFonts, %%IncludeFont, %%Begin‐
208 Font, and %%EndFont comments) should be used.
209 In the default setup there are styles called R, I, B, and BI mounted at
211 font positions 1 to 4. The fonts are grouped into families A, BM, C,
212 H, HN, N, P, and T having members in each of these styles:
213 AR AvantGarde-Book
215 AI AvantGarde-BookOblique
216 AB AvantGarde-Demi
217 ABI AvantGarde-DemiOblique
218 BMR Bookman-Light
219 BMI Bookman-LightItalic
220 BMB Bookman-Demi
221 BMBI Bookman-DemiItalic
222 CR Courier
223 CI Courier-Oblique
224 CB Courier-Bold
225 CBI Courier-BoldOblique
226 HR Helvetica
227 HI Helvetica-Oblique
228 HB Helvetica-Bold
229 HBI Helvetica-BoldOblique
230 HNR Helvetica-Narrow
231 HNI Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique
232 HNB Helvetica-Narrow-Bold
233 HNBI Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique
234 NR NewCenturySchlbk-Roman
235 NI NewCenturySchlbk-Italic
236 NB NewCenturySchlbk-Bold
237 NBI NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic
238 PR Palatino-Roman
239 PI Palatino-Italic
240 PB Palatino-Bold
241 PBI Palatino-BoldItalic
242 TR Times-Roman
243 TI Times-Italic
244 TB Times-Bold
245 TBI Times-BoldItalic
246 There is also the following font which is not a member of a family:
248 ZCMI ZapfChancery-MediumItalic
250 There are also some special fonts called S for the PS Symbol font, and
252 SS, containing slanted lowercase Greek letters taken from PS Symbol.
253 Zapf Dingbats is available as ZD, and a reversed version of ZapfDing‐
254 bats (with symbols pointing in the opposite direction) is available as
255 ZDR; most characters in these fonts are unnamed and must be accessed
256 using \N.
257 The default color for \m and \M is black; for colors defined in the
259 `rgb' color space setrgbcolor is used, for `cmy' and `cmyk' setcmyk‐
260 color, and for `gray' setgray. Note that setcmykcolor is a PostScript
261 LanguageLevel 2 command and thus not available on some older printers.
262 grops understands various X commands produced using the \X escape
264 sequence; grops only interprets commands that begin with a ps: tag.
265 \X'ps: exec code'
267 This executes the arbitrary PostScript commands in code. The
268 PostScript currentpoint is set to the position of the \X command
269 before executing code. The origin is at the top left corner of
270 the page, and y coordinates increase down the page. A proce‐
271 dure u is defined that converts groff units to the coordinate
272 system in effect (provided the user doesn't change the scale).
273 For example,
274 .nr x 1i
276 \X'ps: exec \nx u 0 rlineto stroke'
277 draws a horizontal line one inch long. code may make changes to
279 the graphics state, but any changes persist only to the end of
280 the page. A dictionary containing the definitions specified by
281 the def and mdef is on top of the dictionary stack. If your
282 code adds definitions to this dictionary, you should allocate
283 space for them using \X'ps mdef n'. Any definitions persist
284 only until the end of the page. If you use the \Y escape
285 sequence with an argument that names a macro, code can extend
286 over multiple lines. For example,
287 .nr x 1i
289 .de y
290 ps: exec
291 \nx u 0 rlineto
292 stroke
293 ..
294 \Yy
295 is another way to draw a horizontal line one inch long. Note
297 the single backslash before `nx' – the only reason to use a num‐
298 ber register while defining the macro `y' is to convert a user-
299 specified dimension `1i' to internal groff units which are in
300 turn converted to PS units with the u procedure.
301 grops wraps user-specified PostScript code into a dictionary,
303 nothing more. In particular, it doesn't start and end the
304 inserted code with save and restore, respectively. This must be
305 supplied by the user, if necessary.
306 \X'ps: file name'
308 This is the same as the exec command except that the PostScript
309 code is read from file name.
310 \X'ps: def code'
312 Place a PostScript definition contained in code in the prologue.
313 There should be at most one definition per \X command. Long
314 definitions can be split over several \X commands; all the code
315 arguments are simply joined together separated by newlines. The
316 definitions are placed in a dictionary which is automatically
317 pushed on the dictionary stack when an exec command is executed.
318 If you use the \Y escape sequence with an argument that names a
319 macro, code can extend over multiple lines.
320 \X'ps: mdef n code'
322 Like def, except that code may contain up to n definitions.
323 grops needs to know how many definitions code contains so that
324 it can create an appropriately sized PostScript dictionary to
325 contain them.
326 \X'ps: import file llx lly urx ury width [ height ]'
328 Import a PostScript graphic from file. The arguments llx, lly,
329 urx, and ury give the bounding box of the graphic in the default
330 PostScript coordinate system; they should all be integers; llx
331 and lly are the x and y coordinates of the lower left corner of
332 the graphic; urx and ury are the x and y coordinates of the
333 upper right corner of the graphic; width and height are integers
334 that give the desired width and height in groff units of the
335 graphic.
336 The graphic is scaled so that it has this width and height and
338 translated so that the lower left corner of the graphic is
339 located at the position associated with \X command. If the
340 height argument is omitted it is scaled uniformly in the x and
341 y directions so that it has the specified width.
342 Note that the contents of the \X command are not interpreted by
344 troff; so vertical space for the graphic is not automatically
345 added, and the width and height arguments are not allowed to
346 have attached scaling indicators.
347 If the PostScript file complies with the Adobe Document Struc‐
349 turing Conventions and contains a %%BoundingBox comment, then
350 the bounding box can be automatically extracted from within
351 groff by using the psbb request.
352 See groff_tmac(5) for a description of the PSPIC macro which
354 provides a convenient high-level interface for inclusion of
355 PostScript graphics.
356 \X'ps: invis'
358 \X'ps: endinvis'
359 No output is generated for text and drawing commands that are
360 bracketed with these \X commands. These commands are intended
361 for use when output from troff is previewed before being pro‐
362 cessed with grops; if the previewer is unable to display certain
363 characters or other constructs, then other substitute characters
364 or constructs can be used for previewing by bracketing them with
365 these \X commands.
366 For example, gxditview is not able to display a proper \(em
368 character because the standard X11 fonts do not provide it; this
369 problem can be overcome by executing the following request
370 .char \(em \X'ps: invis'\
372 \Z'\v'-.25m'\h'.05m'\D'l .9m 0'\h'.05m''\
373 \X'ps: endinvis'\(em
374 In this case, gxditview is unable to display the \(em character
376 and draws the line, whereas grops prints the \(em character and
377 ignores the line (this code is already in file Xps.tmac which is
378 loaded if a document intended for grops is previewed with
379 gxditview).
380 If a PostScript procedure BPhook has been defined via a `ps: def' or
382 `ps: mdef' device command, it is executed at the beginning of every
383 page (before anything is drawn or written by groff). For example, to
384 underlay the page contents with the word `DRAFT' in light gray, you
385 might use
386 .de XX
388 ps: def
389 /BPhook
390 { gsave .9 setgray clippath pathbbox exch 2 copy
391 .5 mul exch .5 mul translate atan rotate pop pop
392 /NewCenturySchlbk-Roman findfont 200 scalefont setfont
393 (DRAFT) dup stringwidth pop -.5 mul -70 moveto show
394 grestore }
395 def
396 ..
397 .devicem XX
398 Or, to cause lines and polygons to be drawn with square linecaps and
400 mitered linejoins instead of the round linecaps and linejoins normally
401 used by grops, use
402 .de XX
404 ps: def
405 /BPhook { 2 setlinecap 0 setlinejoin } def
406 ..
407 .devicem XX
408 (square linecaps, as opposed to butt linecaps (0 setlinecap), give true
410 corners in boxed tables even though the lines are drawn unconnected).
411 Encapsulated PostScript
413 grops itself doesn't emit bounding box information. With the help of
414 Ghostscript the following simple script, groff2eps, produces an encap‐
415 sulated PS file.
416 #! /bin/sh
418 groff -P-b16 $1 >$1.ps
419 gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=bbox -- $1.ps 2>$1.bbox
420 cat $1.ps \
421 | sed -e "/^%%Orientation/r$1.bbox" \
422 -e "/^%!PS-Adobe-3.0/s/$/ EPSF-3.0/" >$1.eps
423 rm $1.ps $1.bbox
424 Just say
426 groff2eps foo
428 to convert file foo to foo.eps.
430 TrueType and other font formats
432 TrueType fonts can be used with grops if converted first to Type 42
433 format, a special PostScript wrapper equivalent to the PFA format men‐
434 tioned in pfbtops(1). There are several different methods to generate
435 a type42 wrapper and most of them involve the use of a PostScript
436 interpreter such as Ghostscript – see gs(1).
437 Yet, the easiest method involves the use of the application
439 ttftot42(1). This program uses freetype(3) (version 1.3.1) to generate
440 type42 font wrappers and well-formed AFM files that can be fed to the
441 afmtodit(1) script to create appropriate metric files. The resulting
442 font wrappers should be added to the download file. ttftot42 source
443 code can be downloaded from ftp://www.giga.or.at/pub/nih/ttftot42/
444 ⟨ftp://www.giga.or.at/pub/nih/ttftot42/⟩.
445 Another solution for creating type42 wrappers is to use FontForge,
447 available from http://fontforge.sf.net ⟨http://fontforge.sf.net⟩. This
448 font editor can convert most outline font formats.
449
451 This section gives a summary of the above explanations; it can serve as
452 a step-by-step font installation guide for grops.
453 · Convert your font to something groff understands. This is either a
455 PostScript Type 1 font in PFA format or a PostScript Type 42 font,
456 together with an AFM file.
457 The very first characters in a PFA file look like this:
459 %!PS-AdobeFont-1.0:
461 A PFB file has this also in the first line, but the string is pre‐
463 ceded with some binary bytes.
464 The very first characters in a Type 42 font file look like this:
466 %!PS-TrueTypeFont
468 This is a wrapper format for TrueType fonts. Old PS printers might
470 not support it (this is, they don't have a built-in TrueType font
471 interpreter).
472 If your font is in PFB format (such fonts normally have `.pfb' as
474 the file extension), you might use groff's pfbtops(1) program to
475 convert it to PFA. For TrueType fonts, try ttftot42 or fontforge.
476 For all other font formats use fontforge which can convert most
477 outline font formats.
478 · Convert the AFM file to a groff font description file with the
480 afmtodit(1) program. An example call is
481 afmtodit Foo-Bar-Bold.afm textmap FBB
483 which converts the metric file `Foo-Bar-Bold.afm' to the groff font
485 `FBB'. If you have a font family which comes with normal, bold,
486 italic, and bold italic faces, it is recommended to use the letters
487 R, B, I, and BI, respectively, as postfixes in the groff font names
488 to make groff's `.fam' request work. An example is groff's built-
489 in Times-Roman font: The font family name is T, and the groff font
490 names are TR, TB, TI, and TBI.
491 · Install both the groff font description files and the fonts in a
493 `devps' subdirectory of the font path which groff finds. See the
494 ENVIRONMENT section in the troff(1) man page which lists the actual
495 value of the font path. Note that groff doesn't use the AFM files
496 (but it is a good idea to store them anyway).
497 · Register all fonts which must be downloaded to the printer in the
499 `devps/download' file. Only the first occurrence of this file in
500 the font path is read. This means that you should copy the default
501 `download' file to the first directory in your font path and add
502 your fonts there. To continue the above example we assume that the
503 PS font name for Foo-Bar-Bold.pfa is `XY-Foo-Bar-Bold' (the PS font
504 name is stored in the internalname field in the `FBB' file), thus
505 the following line should be added to `download'.
506 XY-Foo-Bar-Bold Foo-Bar-Bold.pfa
508
510 groff versions 1.19.2 and earlier contain a slightly different set of
511 the 35 Adobe core fonts; the difference is mainly the lack of the
512 `Euro' glyph and a reduced set of kerning pairs. For backwards compat‐
513 ibility, these old fonts are installed also in the
514 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/oldfont/devps
516 directory.
518 To use them, make sure that grops finds the fonts before the default
520 system fonts (with the same names): Either add command line option -F
521 to grops
522 groff -Tps -P-F -P/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/oldfont ...
524 or add the directory to groff's font path environment variable
526 GROFF_FONT_PATH=/usr/share/groff/1.22.2/oldfont
528
530 GROPS_PROLOGUE
531 If this is set to foo, then grops uses the file foo (in the font
532 path) instead of the default prologue file prologue. The option
533 -P overrides this environment variable.
534 GROFF_FONT_PATH
536 A list of directories in which to search for the devname direc‐
537 tory in addition to the default ones. See troff(1) and
538 groff_font(5) for more details.
539
541 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/font/devps/DESC
542 Device description file.
543 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/font/devps/F
545 Font description file for font F.
546 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/font/devps/download
548 List of downloadable fonts.
549 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/font/devps/text.enc
551 Encoding used for text fonts.
552 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/tmac/ps.tmac
554 Macros for use with grops; automatically loaded by troffrc
555 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/tmac/pspic.tmac
557 Definition of PSPIC macro, automatically loaded by ps.tmac.
558 /usr/share/groff/1.22.2/tmac/psold.tmac
560 Macros to disable use of characters not present in older Post‐
561 Script printers (e.g., `eth' or `thorn').
562 /tmp/gropsXXXXXX
564 Temporary file. See groff(1) for details on the location of
565 temporary files.
566
568 afmtodit(1), groff(1), troff(1), pfbtops(1), groff_out(5),
569 groff_font(5), groff_char(7), groff_tmac(5)
570 PostScript Language Document Structuring Conventions Specification
572 ⟨http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/ps/5001.DSC_Spec.pdf⟩
573Groff Version 1.22.2 7 February 2013 GROPS(1)