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Name | Synopsis | Description | Options | Usage | Font Installation | Old Fonts | Environment | Files | See also | COLOPHON |
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grops(1) General Commands Manual grops(1)
grops - groff output driver for PostScript
grops [-glm] [-b n] [-c n] [-F dir] [-I dir] [-p papersize]
[-P prologue] [-w n] [file ...]
grops --help
grops -v
grops --version
grops translates the output of GNU troff to PostScript. Normally
grops should be invoked by using the groff command with a -Tps
option. (Actually, this is the default for groff.) If no files
are given, grops reads the standard input. A filename of - also
causes grops to read the standard input. PostScript output is
written to the standard output. When grops is run by groff
options can be passed to grops using groff's -P option.
Note that grops doesn't produce a valid document structure
(conforming to the Document Structuring Convention) if called
with multiple file arguments. 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 how to install fonts for grops.
--help displays a usage message, while -v and --version show
version information; all exit afterward.
-bn Provide workarounds for older printers, broken spoolers,
and previewers. Normally grops produces output at
PostScript LanguageLevel 2 that conforms to the Document
Structuring Conventions version 3.0. Some older printers,
spoolers, and previewers can't handle such output. The
value of n controls what grops does to make its output
acceptable to such programs. A value of 0 causes grops
not to employ any workarounds.
Add 1 if no %%BeginDocumentSetup and %%EndDocumentSetup
comments should be generated; this is needed for early
versions of TranScript that get confused by anything
between the %%EndProlog comment and the first %%Page
comment.
Add 2 if lines in included files beginning with %! should
be stripped out; this is needed for Sun's pageview
previewer.
Add 4 if %%Page, %%Trailer and %%EndProlog comments should
be stripped out of included files; this is needed for
spoolers that don't understand the %%BeginDocument and
%%EndDocument comments.
Add 8 if the first line of the PostScript output should be
%!PS-Adobe-2.0 rather than %!PS-Adobe-3.0; this is needed
when using Sun's Newsprint with a printer that requires
page reversal.
Add 16 if no media size information should be included in
the document (this is, neither use %%DocumentMedia nor the
setpagedevice PostScript command). This was the behaviour
of groff version 1.18.1 and earlier; it is needed for
older printers which don't understand PostScript
LanguageLevel 2. It is also necessary if the output is
further processed to get an encapsulated PS (EPS) file –
see below.
The default value can be specified by a
broken n
command in the DESC file. Otherwise the default value
is 0.
-cn Print n copies of each page.
-Fdir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for
prologue, font, and device description files; name is the
name of the device, usually ps.
-g Guess the page length. This generates PostScript code
that guesses 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 both on letter (8.5×11) paper and on A4 paper
without change.
-Idir This option may be used to add a directory to the search
path for files on the command line and files named in
\X'ps: import' and \X'ps: file' escapes. The search path
is initialized with the current directory. This option
may be specified more than once; the directories are then
searched in the order specified (but before the current
directory). If you want to make the current directory be
read before other directories, add -I. at the appropriate
place.
No directory search is performed for files with an
absolute file name.
-l Print the document in landscape format.
-m Turn manual feed on for the document.
-ppaper-size
Set physical dimension of output medium. This overrides
the papersize, paperlength, and paperwidth commands in the
DESC file; it accepts the same arguments as the papersize
command. See groff_font(5) for details.
-Pprologue-file
Use the file prologue-file (in the font path) as the
prologue instead of the default prologue file prologue.
This option overrides the environment variable
GROPS_PROLOGUE.
-wn Lines should be drawn using a thickness of n thousandths
of an em. If this option is not given, the line thickness
defaults to 0.04 em.
The input to grops must be in the format output by troff(1).
This is described in groff_out(5).
In addition, the device and font description files for the device
used must meet certain requirements: The resolution must be an
integer multiple of 72 times the sizescale. The ps device uses a
resolution of 72000 and a sizescale of 1000.
The device description file must contain a valid paper size; see
groff_font(5) for more information.
Each font description file must contain a command
internalname psname
which says that the PostScript name of the font is psname. It
may also contain a command
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 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 the character does not have a groff name.
Every character in the font file must exist in the PostScript
font, and the widths given in the font 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.
Note that grops is able to display all glyphs in a PostScript
font, not only 256. enc_file (or the default encoding if no
encoding file 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 automatically include the downloadable fonts necessary
to print the document. Such fonts must be in PFA format. Use
pfbtops(1) to convert a Type 1 font in PFB format. Any
downloadable fonts which should, when required, be included by
grops must be listed in the file /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/
font/devps/download; this should consist of lines of the form
font filename
where font is the PostScript name of the font, and filename is
the name of the file containing the font; lines beginning with #
and blank lines are ignored; fields may be separated by tabs or
spaces; filename is searched for using the same mechanism that is
used for groff font metric files. The download file itself is
also searched for using this mechanism; currently, only the first
found file in the font 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.
In the default setup there are styles called R, I, B, and BI
mounted at font positions 1 to 4. The fonts are grouped into
families A, BM, C, H, HN, N, P, and T 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
There is also the following font which is not a member of a
family:
ZCMI ZapfChancery-MediumItalic
There are also some special fonts called S for the PS Symbol
font, and SS, containing slanted lowercase Greek letters taken
from PS Symbol. Zapf Dingbats is available as ZD, and a reversed
version of ZapfDingbats (with symbols pointing in the opposite
direction) is available as ZDR; most characters in these fonts
are unnamed and must be accessed using \N.
The default color for \m and \M is black; for colors defined in
the ‘rgb’ color space setrgbcolor is used, for ‘cmy’ and ‘cmyk’
setcmykcolor, and for ‘gray’ setgray. Note that setcmykcolor is
a PostScript LanguageLevel 2 command and thus not available on
some older printers.
grops understands various X commands produced using the \X escape
sequence; grops only interprets commands that begin with a ps:
tag.
\X'ps: exec code'
This executes the arbitrary PostScript commands in code.
The PostScript currentpoint is set to the position of the
\X command before executing code. The origin is at the
top left corner of the page, and y coordinates increase
down the page. A procedure u is defined that converts
groff 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 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.
Note the single backslash before ‘nx’ – the only reason to
use a number register while defining the macro ‘y’ is to
convert a user-specified dimension ‘1i’ to internal groff
units which are in turn converted to PS 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 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 directions so that it has the
specified width.
Note that 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 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 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. With the
help of Ghostscript the following simple script, groff2eps,
produces an encapsulated PS 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 $1.bbox
Just say
groff2eps foo
to convert file foo to foo.eps.
TrueType and other font formats
TrueType fonts can be used with grops if converted first to
Type 42 format, a PostScript wrapper equivalent to the PFA format
described in pfbtops(1). Several methods exist to generate a
Type 42 wrapper; some of them involve the use of a PostScript
interpreter such as Ghostscript—see gs(1).
One approach is to use FontForge ⟨https://fontforge.org/⟩, a font
editor that can convert most outline font formats. Here's an
example of using the Roboto Slab Serif font with groff. Several
variables are used so that you can more easily adapt it into your
own script.
MAP=/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/generate/textmap
TTF=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/roboto/slab/RobotoSlab-Regular.ttf
BASE=$(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 satisifed 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.
This section gives a summary of the above explanations; it can
serve as a step-by-step font installation guide for grops.
• Convert your font to something groff understands. This is
either a PostScript Type 1 font in PFA format or a
PostScript Type 42 font, together with an AFM file.
The very first characters in a PFA file look like this:
%!PS-AdobeFont-1.0:
A PFB file has this also in the first line, but the string
is preceded with some binary bytes.
The very first characters in a Type 42 font file look like
this:
%!PS-TrueTypeFont
This is a wrapper format for TrueType fonts. Old PS
printers might not support it (this is, they don't have a
built-in TrueType font interpreter).
If your font is in PFB format (such fonts normally have
.pfb as the file extension), you might use groff's
pfbtops(1) program to convert it to PFA. For TrueType
fonts, try ttftot42 or fontforge. For all other font
formats use fontforge which can convert most outline font
formats.
• Convert the AFM file to a groff font description file with
the afmtodit(1) program. An example call is
afmtodit Foo-Bar-Bold.afm textmap FBB
which converts the metric file Foo-Bar-Bold.afm to the
groff font FBB. If you have a font family which comes
with normal, bold, italic, and bold italic faces, it is
recommended to use the letters R, B, I, and BI,
respectively, as postfixes in the groff font names to make
groff's ‘.fam’ request work. An example is groff's built-
in Times-Roman font: The font family name is T, and the
groff font names are TR, TB, TI, and TBI.
• Install both the groff font description files and the
fonts in a devps subdirectory of the font path which groff
finds. See section “Environment” in troff(1) for the
actual value of the font path. Note that groff doesn't
use the AFM files (but it is a good idea to store them
anyway).
• Register all fonts which must be downloaded to the printer
in the devps/download file. Only the first occurrence of
this file in the font path is read. This means that you
should copy the default download file to the first
directory in your font path and add your fonts there. To
continue the above example we assume that the PS font name
for Foo-Bar-Bold.pfa is ‘XY-Foo-Bar-Bold’ (the PS font
name is stored in the internalname field in the FBB file),
thus the following line should be added to download.
XY-Foo-Bar-Bold Foo-Bar-Bold.pfa
groff versions 1.19.2 and earlier contain a slightly different
set of the 35 Adobe core fonts; the difference is mainly the lack
of the ‘Euro’ glyph and a reduced set of kerning pairs. For
backwards compatibility, these old fonts are installed also 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 add command-
line option -F to grops
groff -Tps -P-F -P/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/oldfont
...
or add the directory to groff's font path environment variable
GROFF_FONT_PATH=/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/oldfont
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.
GROFF_FONT_PATH
A list of directories in which to search for the devname
directory in addition to the default ones. See troff(1)
and groff_font(5) for more details.
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
A timestamp (expressed as seconds since the Unix epoch) to
use as the creation timestamp in place of the current
time.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/DESC
Device description file.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/F
Font description file for font F.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/download
List of downloadable fonts.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devps/text.enc
Encoding used for text fonts.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/ps.tmac
Macros for use with grops; automatically loaded by troffrc
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/pspic.tmac
Definition of PSPIC macro, automatically loaded by
ps.tmac.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/psold.tmac
Macros to disable use of characters not present in older
PostScript printers (e.g., ‘eth’ or ‘thorn’).
/tmp/gropsXXXXXX
Temporary file. See groff(1) for details on the location
of temporary files.
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)
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 2020-12-18. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2020-12-09.) 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.rc1.56-5346-dirt1y3 November 2020 grops(1)
Pages that refer to this page: afmtodit(1), groff(1), grotty(1), pfbtops(1), pic(1), groff_out(5), roff(7)
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