1GROFF_FILENAMES(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual GROFF_FILENAMES(7)
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6 groff_filenames — filename extensions for roff and groff
7
9 Since the evolution of roff in the 1970s, a whole bunch of filename
10 extensions for roff files were used.
11 The roff extensions refer to preprocessors or macro packages. These
13 extensions are fixed in all Unix-like operating systems.
14 Later on, groff added some more extensions. We will now write a
16 man-page about these filename extensions.
17
19 Each roff file can be optionally compressed. That means that the total
20 filename ends with a compressor name. So the whole filename has the
21 structure <name>.<extension>[.<compression>].
22 Mostly known are the compressor extensions .Z, .gz, and .bzip2. Rela‐
24 tively new is .xz.
25 From now on, we will ignore the compressions and only comment the
27 structure <name>.<extension>.
28
30 The Unix manual pages are shortly named man-pages. The man-page style
31 is the best known part of the roff language.
32 The extensions for man should be better documented. So this is docu‐
34 mented here.
35 Files written in the man language use the following extension: *.<sec‐
37 tion>[<group>].
38 Man-page Sections
40 The traditional man-page <section> is a digit from 1 to 8.
41 <name>.1
43 <name>.2
44 <name>.3
45 <name>.4
46 <name>.5
47 <name>.6
48 <name>.7
49 <name>.8
50 Classic man-page sections.
51 Linux added the section number 9 for kernel man-pages.
53 <name>.9
55 Linux kernel man-pages
56 In older commercial Unix systems, the 3 characters l, n, and o were
58 also used as section names. This is today deprecated, but there are
59 still documents in this format.
60 <name>.l
62 <name>.n
63 <name>.o
64 Deprecated old man-page sections.
65 Man-page Group Extensions
67 The <group> extension in .<section>[<group>] is optional, but it can be
68 any string of word characters. Usually programmers use a group name
69 that is already used, e.g. x for X Window System documents or tk to
70 refer to the tk programming language.
71 Examples:
73 groff.1
75 is the man-page for groff in section 1 without a group
76 xargs.1posix.gz
78 is the man-page for the program xargs in section 1 and group
79 posix; moreover it is compressed with gz (gzip).
80 config.5ssl
82 OpenSSL CONF library configuration files from section 5 with
83 group ssl.
84 dpkg-reconfigure.8cdebconf
86 man-page for the program dpkg-reconfigure in section 8 and group
87 cdebconf.
88 Source of Man-pages
90 There are 2 roff languages for writing man-pages: man and mdoc.
91 The names of these 2 styles are taken as extensions for the source code
93 files of man-pages in the groff package.
94 <name>.man
96 traditional Unix-like man-page format within groff source files.
97 <name>.n
99 A temporary man-page file produced from a name.man man-page by a
100 run of make within the groff source package.
101 <name>.mdoc
103 Man-page format in BSD.
104 <name>.1b
106 Man-page format in heirloom roff .
107 <name>.mandoc
109 Files using this extension recognize both man-page formats in
110 groff and other processors.
111
113 Files Using Macro Packages
114 The classical roff languages were interpreted by the traditional troff
115 and nroff programs.
116 There were several roff languages, each represented by a macro-package.
118 Each of these provided a suitable file name extension:
119 <name>.me
121 roff file using the me macro package.
122 <name>.mm
124 roff file using the mm macro package
125 <name>.ms
127 roff file using the ms macro package
128 All of these classical roff languages and their extensions are still
130 very active in groff.
131 Source Code for Macro Packages (TMAC Files)
133 In traditional roff the source code for the macro packages was stored
134 in TMAC files. Their file names have the form:
135 tmac.<package>,
137 <package> is the name of the macro package without the leading m
138 character, which is reintegrated by the option -m.
139 For example, tmac.an is the source for the man macro package.
141 In the groff source, more suitable file names were integrated, see
143 later on.
144 Preprocessors
146 Moreover, the following preprocessors were used as filename extension:
147 <name>.chem
149 for the integration of chemical formulas
150 <name>.eqn
152 for the mathematical use of equations
153 <name>.pic
155 graphical tool
156 <name>.tbl
158 for tables with tbl
159 <name>.ref
161 for files using the prefer preprocessor
162 Classical Roff Files
164 <name>.t
165 <name>.tr
166 for files using the roff language of any kind
167
169 GNU roff groff is the actual roff standard, both for classical roff and
170 new extensions. So even the used new extensions in the source code
171 should be regarded as actual standard. The following extensions are
172 used instead of classical .t or .tr:
173 <name>.groff
175 <name>.roff
176 general ending for files using the groff language
177 Source Code for Macro Packages (TMAC Files)
179 As the classical form tmac.<package_without_m>, of the TMAC file names
180 is quite strange, groff added the following structures:
181 <package_without_m>.tmac
183 m<package>.tmac
184 groff_m<package>.tmac
185 Files Using new Macro Packages
187 Groff uses the following new macro packages:
188 <name>.mmse
190 file with swedish mm macros for groff
191 <name>.mom
193 files written in the groff macro package mom
194 <name>.www
196 files written in HTML-like groff macros.
197 Preprocessors and Postprocessors
199 <name>.hdtbl
200 a new tbl format. See groff_hdtbl(7).
201 <name>.grap
203 files written for the graphical grap processor.
204 <name>.grn
206 for including gremlin(1), pictures, see grn(1).
207 <name>.pdfroff
209 transform this file with pdfroff of the groff system
210
212 History and future
213 roff(7), man-pages(7), groff_diff(7), groff(7)
214 Compression
216 uncompress(1posix), gzip2(1), bzip2(1), xz(1)
217 A man-page of the naming form name(n) can be read in text mode by
219 man n name
220 or in graphical mode (PDF) by
221 groffer n name
222 Gunnar Ritter's Heirloom roff project ⟨https://github.com/n-t-roff/
224 heirloom-doctools⟩. You can get this package with the shell command:
225 $ git clone https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools
226
228 Copyright © 2013-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
229 This file is part of groff, a free software project. You can redis‐
231 tribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
232 License version 2 (GPL2) as published by the Free Software Foundation
233 (FSF).
234 The license text can be found in the internet at
236 ⟨http://www.gnu.org/licenses⟩.
237
239 This file was written by Bernd Warken ⟨groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de⟩.
240Groff Version 1.22.3 4 November 2014 GROFF_FILENAMES(7)