1PDFROFF(1) General Commands Manual PDFROFF(1)
2
6 pdfroff - create PDF documents using groff
7
9 pdfroff [-abcegilpstzCEGNRSUVXZ] [-d cs] [-f fam] [-F dir] [-I dir]
10 [-L arg] [-m name] [-M dir] [-n num] [-o list] [-P arg] [-r cn]
11 [-T dev] [-w name] [-W name] [--emit-ps] [--no-toc-relocation]
12 [--no-kill-null-pages] [--stylesheet=name] [--no-pdf-output]
13 [--pdf-output=name] [--no-reference-dictionary]
14 [--reference-dictionary=name] [--report-progress]
15 [--keep-temporary-files] file ...
16 pdfroff -h | --help
17 pdfroff -v | --version [option ...]
18
20 pdfroff is a wrapper program for the GNU text processing system, groff.
21 It transparently handles the mechanics of multiple pass groff process‐
22 ing, when applied to suitably marked up groff source files, such that
23 tables of contents and body text are formatted separately, and are sub‐
24 sequently combined in the correct order, for final publication as a
25 single PDF document. A further optional “style sheet” capability is
26 provided; this allows for the definition of content which is required
27 to precede the table of contents, in the published document.
28 For each invocation of pdfroff, the ultimate groff output stream is
30 post-processed by the GhostScript interpreter, to produce a finished
31 PDF document.
32 pdfroff makes no assumptions about, and imposes no restrictions on, the
34 use of any groff macro packages which the user may choose to employ, in
35 order to achieve a desired document format; however, it does include
36 specific built in support for the pdfmark macro package, should the
37 user choose to employ it. Specifically, if the pdfhref macro, defined
38 in the pdfmark.tmac package, is used to define public reference marks,
39 or dynamic links to such reference marks, then pdfroff performs as many
40 preformatting groff passes as required, up to a maximum limit of four,
41 in order to compile a document reference dictionary, to resolve refer‐
42 ences, and to expand the dynamically defined content of links.
43
45 The command line is parsed in accordance with normal GNU conventions,
46 but with one exception — when specifying any short form option (i.e., a
47 single character option introduced by a single hyphen), and if that
48 option expects an argument, then it must be specified independently
49 (i.e., it may not be appended to any group of other single character
50 short form options).
51 Long form option names (i.e., those introduced by a double hyphen) may
53 be abbreviated to their minimum length unambiguous initial substring.
54 Otherwise, pdfroff usage closely mirrors that of groff itself. Indeed,
56 with the exception of the -h, -v, and -T dev short form options, and
57 all long form options, which are parsed internally by pdfroff, all
58 options and file name arguments specified on the command line are
59 passed on to groff, to control the formatting of the PDF document.
60 Consequently, pdfroff accepts all options and arguments, as specified
61 in groff(1), which may also be considered as the definitive reference
62 for all standard pdfroff options and argument usage.
63
65 pdfroff accepts all of the short form options (i.e., those introduced
66 by a single hyphen), which are available with groff itself. In most
67 cases, these are simply passed transparently to groff; the following,
68 however, are handled specially by pdfroff.
69 -h Same as --help; see below.
71 -i Process standard input, after all other specified input files.
73 This is passed transparently to groff, but, if grouped with
74 other options, it must be the first in the group. Hiding it
75 within a group breaks standard input processing, in the multiple
76 pass groff processing context of pdfroff.
77 -T dev Only -T ps is supported by pdfroff. Attempting to specify any
79 other device causes pdfroff to abort.
80 -v Same as --version; see below.
82 See groff(1) for a description of all other short form options, which
84 are transparently passed through pdfroff to groff.
85 All long form options (i.e., those introduced by a double hyphen) are
87 interpreted locally by pdfroff; they are not passed on to groff, unless
88 otherwise stated below.
89 --help Causes pdfroff to display a summary of the its usage syntax, and
91 supported options, and then exit.
92 --emit-ps
94 Suppresses the final output conversion step, causing pdfroff to
95 emit PostScript output instead of PDF. This may be useful, to
96 capture intermediate PostScript output, when using a specialised
97 postprocessor, such as gpresent for example, in place of the
98 default GhostScript PDF writer.
99 --keep-temporary-files
101 Suppresses the deletion of temporary files, which normally
102 occurs after pdfroff has completed PDF document formatting; this
103 may be useful, when debugging formatting problems.
104 See section FILES, for a description of the temporary files used
106 by pdfroff.
107 --no-pdf-output
109 May be used with the --reference-dictionary=name option
110 (described below) to eliminate the overhead of PDF formatting,
111 when running pdfroff to create a reference dictionary, for use
112 in a different document.
113 --no-reference-dictionary
115 May be used to eliminate the overhead of creating a reference
116 dictionary, when it is known that the target PDF document con‐
117 tains no public references, created by the pdfhref macro.
118 --no-toc-relocation
120 May be used to eliminate the extra groff processing pass, which
121 is required to generate a table of contents, and relocate it to
122 the start of the PDF document, when processing any document
123 which lacks an automatically generated table of contents.
124 --no-kill-null-pages
126 While preparing for simulation of the manual collation step,
127 which is traditionally required to relocate of a table of con‐
128 tents to the start of a document, pdfroff accumulates a number
129 of empty page descriptions into the intermediate PostScript out‐
130 put stream. During the final collation step, these empty pages
131 are normally discarded from the finished document; this option
132 forces pdfroff to leave them in place.
133 --pdf-output=name
135 Specifies the name to be used for the resultant PDF document; if
136 unspecified, the PDF output is written to standard output. A
137 future version of pdfroff may use this option, to encode the
138 document name in a generated reference dictionary.
139 --reference-dictionary=name
141 Specifies the name to be used for the generated reference dic‐
142 tionary file; if unspecified, the reference dictionary is cre‐
143 ated in a temporary file, which is deleted when pdfroff com‐
144 pletes processing of the current document. This option must be
145 specified, if it is desired to save the reference dictionary,
146 for use in references placed in other PDF documents.
147 --report-progress
149 Causes pdfroff to display an informational message on standard
150 error, at the start of each groff processing pass.
151 --stylesheet=name
153 Specifies the name of an input file, to be used as a style sheet
154 for formatting of content, which is to be placed before the ta‐
155 ble of contents, in the formatted PDF document.
156 --version
158 Causes pdfroff to display a version identification message. The
159 entire command line is then passed transparently to groff, in a
160 one pass operation only, in order to display the associated
161 groff version information, before exiting.
162
164 The following environment variables may be set, and exported, to modify
165 the behaviour of pdfroff.
166 PDFROFF_COLLATE
168 Specifies the program to be used for collation of the finished
169 PDF document.
170 This collation step may be required to move tables of contents
172 to the start of the finished PDF document, when formatting with
173 traditional macro packages, which print them at the end. How‐
174 ever, users should not normally need to specify PDFROFF_COLLATE,
175 (and indeed, are not encouraged to do so). If unspecified,
176 pdfroff uses sed(1) by default, which normally suffices.
177 If PDFROFF_COLLATE is specified, then it must act as a filter,
179 accepting a list of file name arguments, and write its output to
180 the stdout stream, whence it is piped to the
181 PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND, to produce the finished PDF out‐
182 put.
183 When specifying PDFROFF_COLLATE, it is normally necessary to
185 also specify PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES.
186 PDFROFF_COLLATE is ignored, if pdfroff is invoked with the
188 --no-kill-null-pages option.
189 PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES
191 Specifies options to be passed to the PDFROFF_COLLATE program.
192 It should not normally be necessary to specify
194 PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES. The internal default is a sed(1)
195 script, which is intended to remove completely blank pages from
196 the collated output stream, and which should be appropriate in
197 most applications of pdfroff. However, if any alternative to
198 sed(1) is specified for PDFROFF_COLLATE, then it is likely that
199 a corresponding alternative specification for
200 PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES is required.
201 As in the case of PDFROFF_COLLATE, PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES is
203 ignored, if pdfroff is invoked with the --no-kill-null-pages
204 option.
205 PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND
207 Specifies the command to be used for the final document conver‐
208 sion from PostScript intermediate output to PDF. It must behave
209 as a filter, writing its output to the stdout stream, and must
210 accept an arbitrary number of files ... arguments, with the spe‐
211 cial case of - representing the stdin stream.
212 If unspecified, PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND defaults to
214 gs -dBATCH -dQUIET -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
216 -sOutputFile=-
217 GROFF_TMPDIR
219 Identifies the directory in which pdfroff should create a subdi‐
220 rectory for its temporary files. If GROFF_TMPDIR is not speci‐
221 fied, then the variables TMPDIR, TMP and TEMP are considered in
222 turn, as possible temporary file repositories. If none of these
223 are set, then temporary files are created in a subdirectory of
224 /tmp.
225 GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER
227 Specifies the program to be invoked, when pdfroff converts groff
228 PostScript output to PDF. If PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND is
229 specified, then the command name it specifies is implicitly as‐
230 signed to GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER, overriding any explicit
231 setting specified in the environment. If
232 GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER is not specified, then pdfroff
233 searches the process PATH, looking for a program with any of the
234 well known names for the GhostScript interpreter; if no Ghost‐
235 Script interpreter can be found, pdfroff aborts.
236 GROFF_AWK_INTERPRETER
238 Specifies the program to be invoked, when pdfroff is extracting
239 reference dictionary entries from a groff intermediate message
240 stream. If GROFF_AWK_INTERPRETER is not specified, then pdfroff
241 searches the process PATH, looking for any of the preferred pro‐
242 grams, ‘gawk’, ‘mawk’, ‘nawk’, and awk’, in this order; if none
243 of these are found, pdfroff issues a warning message, and con‐
244 tinue processing; however, in this case, no reference dictionary
245 is created.
246 OSTYPE Typically defined automatically by the operating system, OSTYPE
248 is used on Microsoft Win32/MS-DOS platforms only, to infer the
249 default PATH_SEPARATOR character, which is used when parsing the
250 process PATH to search for external helper programs.
251 PATH_SEPARATOR
253 If set, PATH_SEPARATOR overrides the default separator charac‐
254 ter, (‘:’ on POSIX/UNIX systems, inferred from OSTYPE on Micro‐
255 soft Win32/MS-DOS), which is used when parsing the process PATH
256 to search for external helper programs.
257 SHOW_PROGRESS
259 If this is set to a non-empty value, then pdfroff always behaves
260 as if the --report-progress option is specified, on the command
261 line.
262
264 Input and output files for pdfroff may be named according to any con‐
265 vention of the user's choice. Typically, input files may be named ac‐
266 cording to the choice of the principal formatting macro package, e.g.,
267 file.ms might be an input file for formatting using the ms macros
268 (s.tmac); normally, the final output file should be named file.pdf.
269 Temporary files, created by pdfroff, are placed in the file system hi‐
271 erarchy, in or below the directory specified by environment variables
272 (see section ENVIRONMENT). If mktemp(1) is available, it is invoked to
273 create a private subdirectory of the nominated temporary files directo‐
274 ry, (with subdirectory name derived from the template pdfroff-
275 XXXXXXXXXX); if this subdirectory is successfully created, the tempo‐
276 rary files will be placed within it, otherwise they will be placed di‐
277 rectly in the directory nominated in the environment.
278 All temporary files themselves are named according to the convention
280 pdf$$.*, where $$ is the standard shell variable representing the
281 process ID of the pdfroff process itself, and * represents any of the
282 extensions used by pdfroff to identify the following temporary and in‐
283 termediate files.
284 pdf$$.tmp
286 A scratch pad file, used to capture reference data emitted by
287 groff, during the reference dictionary compilation phase.
288 pdf$$.ref
290 The reference dictionary, as compiled in the last but one pass
291 of the reference dictionary compilation phase; (at the start of
292 the first pass, this file is created empty; in successive pass‐
293 es, it contains the reference dictionary entries, as collected
294 in the preceding pass).
295 If the --reference-dictionary=name option is specified, this in‐
297 termediate file becomes permanent, and is named name, rather
298 than pdf$$.ref.
299 pdf$$.cmp
301 Used to collect reference dictionary entries during the active
302 pass of the reference dictionary compilation phase. At the end
303 of any pass, when the content of pdf$$.cmp compares as identical
304 to pdf$$.ref, (or the corresponding file named by the
305 --reference-dictionary=name option), then reference dictionary
306 compilation is terminated, and the document reference map is ap‐
307 pended to this intermediate file, for inclusion in the final
308 formatting passes.
309 pdf$$.tc
311 An intermediate PostScript file, in which “Table of Contents”
312 entries are collected, to facilitate relocation before the body
313 text, on ultimate output to the GhostScript postprocessor.
314 pdf$$.ps
316 An intermediate PostScript file, in which the body text is col‐
317 lected prior to ultimate output to the GhostScript postproces‐
318 sor, in the proper sequence, after pdf$$.tc.
319
321 See groff(1) for the definitive reference to document formatting with
322 groff. Since pdfroff provides a superset of all groff capabilities,
323 groff(1) may also be considered to be the definitive reference to all
324 standard capabilities of pdfroff, with this document providing the ref‐
325 erence to pdfroff's extended features.
326 While pdfroff imposes neither any restriction on, nor any requirement
328 for, the use of any specific groff macro package, a number of supplied
329 macro packages, and in particular those associated with the package
330 pdfmark.tmac, are best suited for use with pdfroff as the preferred
331 formatter. Detailed documentation on the use of these packages may be
332 found, in PDF format, in the reference guide “Portable Document Format
333 Publishing with GNU Troff”, included in the installed documentation set
334 as /usr/share/doc/groff/pdf/pdfmark.pdf.
335
337 Copyright © 2005-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
338 This file is part of groff, the free GNU roff type-setting system.
340 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
342 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), Version
343 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
344 with no Front-Cover Texts, no Back-Cover Texts, and the following In‐
345 variant Sections:--
346 a) This "Legal Matters" section, extending from the definition of
348 .co to the end of the enclosing .au definition.
349 b) The entire sections bearing the heading "COPYING" and
351 "AUTHORS".
352 A copy of the Free Documentation License is included as a file called
354 FDL in the main directory of the groff source package, it is also
355 available in the internet at the GNU copyleft site ⟨http://www.gnu.org/
356 copyleft/fdl.html⟩.
357
359 It was originally written by Keith Marshall ⟨keith.d.marshall@
360 ntlworld.com⟩, who also wrote the implementation of the pdfroff pro‐
361 gram, to which it relates.
362Groff Version 1.22.3 29 January 2020 PDFROFF(1)