Provided by: groff_1.23.0-3build2_amd64 bug

Name

       pdfroff - construct files in Portable Document Format using groff

Synopsis

       pdfroff [groff-option] [--emit-ps] [--no-toc-relocation] [--no-kill-null-pages]
               [--stylesheet=name] [--no-pdf-output] [--pdf-output=name]
               [--no-reference-dictionary] [--reference-dictionary=name] [--report-progress]
               [--keep-temporary-files] [file ...]

       pdfroff -h
       pdfroff --help

       pdfroff -v [groff-option ...]
       pdfroff --version [groff-option ...]

       groff-option is any short option supported by groff(1) except for  -h,  -T,  and  -v;  see
       section “Usage” below.

Description

       pdfroff  is a wrapper program for the GNU text processing system, groff.  It transparently
       handles the mechanics of multiple pass groff processing, when applied to  suitably  marked
       up  groff  source  files,  such  that  tables  of  contents  and  body  text are formatted
       separately, and are subsequently combined in the correct order, for final publication as a
       single PDF document.  A further optional “style sheet” capability is provided; this allows
       for the definition of content which is required to precede the table of contents,  in  the
       published document.

       For  each invocation of pdfroff, the ultimate groff output stream is post-processed by the
       Ghostscript gs(1) interpreter to produce a finished PDF document.

       pdfroff makes no assumptions about, and imposes no restrictions on, the use of  any  groff
       macro packages which the user may choose to employ, in order to achieve a desired document
       format; however, it does include specific built in support for the pdfmark macro  package,
       should  the  user choose to employ it.  Specifically, if the pdfhref macro, defined in the
       pdfmark.tmac package, is used to define public reference marks, or dynamic links  to  such
       reference  marks, then pdfroff performs as many preformatting groff passes as required, up
       to a maximum limit of four, in order  to  compile  a  document  reference  dictionary,  to
       resolve references, and to expand the dynamically defined content of links.

Usage

       The  command  line  is  parsed  in  accordance  with  normal GNU conventions, but with one
       exception—when  specifying  any  short  form  option  (i.e.,  a  single  character  option
       introduced  by  a  single hyphen), and if that option expects an argument, then it must be
       specified independently (i.e., it may not  be  appended  to  any  group  of  other  single
       character short form options).

       Long  form  option names (i.e., those introduced by a double hyphen) may be abbreviated to
       their minimum length unambiguous initial substring.

       Otherwise, pdfroff usage closely mirrors that of groff itself.  Indeed, with the exception
       of  the -h, -v, and -T dev short form options, and all long form options, which are parsed
       internally by pdfroff, all options and file name arguments specified on the  command  line
       are  passed  on  to  groff,  to control the formatting of the PDF document.  Consequently,
       pdfroff accepts all options and arguments, as specified in groff(1),  which  may  also  be
       considered  as  the  definitive  reference  for  all standard pdfroff options and argument
       usage.

Options

       pdfroff accepts all of the short form options (i.e., those introduced by a single hyphen),
       which  are  available  with  groff  itself.   In  most  cases,  these  are  simply  passed
       transparently to groff; the following, however, are handled specially by pdfroff.

       -h     Same as --help; see below.

       -i     Process standard input, after all other specified  input  files.   This  is  passed
              transparently to groff, but, if grouped with other options, it must be the first in
              the group.  Hiding it within a group  breaks  standard  input  processing,  in  the
              multiple-pass groff processing context of pdfroff.

       -T dev Only  -T ps is supported by pdfroff.  Attempting to specify any other device causes
              pdfroff to abort.

       -v     Same as --version; see below.

       See groff(1) for a description of all other short form options,  which  are  transparently
       passed through pdfroff to groff.

       All  long form options (i.e., those introduced by a double hyphen) are interpreted locally
       by pdfroff; they are not passed on to groff, unless otherwise stated below.

       --help Causes pdfroff to display a summary of the its usage syntax, and supported options,
              and then exit.

       --emit-ps
              Suppresses  the  final  output  conversion step, causing pdfroff to emit PostScript
              output instead of PDF.  This may  be  useful  to  capture  intermediate  PostScript
              output  when  using  a  specialised postprocessor, such as gpresent for example, in
              place of the default Ghostscript PDF writer.

       --keep-temporary-files
              Suppresses the deletion of temporary files, which normally occurs after pdfroff has
              completed  PDF  document  formatting;  this may be useful when debugging formatting
              problems.

              See section “Files” below for a description of the temporary files used by pdfroff.

       --no-pdf-output
              May be used  with  the  --reference-dictionary=name  option  (described  below)  to
              eliminate the overhead of PDF formatting when running pdfroff to create a reference
              dictionary for use in a different document.

       --no-reference-dictionary
              May be used to eliminate the overhead of creating a reference dictionary,  when  it
              is known that the target PDF document contains no public references, created by the
              pdfhref macro.

       --no-toc-relocation
              May be used to eliminate the extra groff processing  pass,  which  is  required  to
              generate  a  table  of  contents, and relocate it to the start of the PDF document,
              when processing any document  which  lacks  an  automatically  generated  table  of
              contents.

       --no-kill-null-pages
              While preparing for simulation of the manual collation step, which is traditionally
              required to relocate a table of contents  to  the  start  of  a  document,  pdfroff
              accumulates  a  number  of empty page descriptions into the intermediate PostScript
              output stream.  During the final collation step, these  empty  pages  are  normally
              discarded  from  the finished document; this option forces pdfroff to leave them in
              place.

       --pdf-output=name
              Specifies the name to be used for the resultant PDF document; if  unspecified,  the
              PDF output is written to standard output.  A future version of pdfroff may use this
              option, to encode the document name in a generated reference dictionary.

       --reference-dictionary=name
              Specifies the name to be used for  the  generated  reference  dictionary  file;  if
              unspecified,  the  reference  dictionary  is  created in a temporary file, which is
              deleted when pdfroff completes processing of the  current  document.   This  option
              must  be  specified,  if it is desired to save the reference dictionary, for use in
              references placed in other PDF documents.

       --report-progress
              Causes pdfroff to display an informational message on standard error, at the  start
              of each groff processing pass.

       --stylesheet=name
              Specifies  the name of an input file, to be used as a style sheet for formatting of
              content, which is to be placed before the table of contents, in the  formatted  PDF
              document.

       --version
              Causes  pdfroff  to  display  a version identification message.  The entire command
              line is then passed transparently to groff, in a one pass operation only, in  order
              to display the associated groff version information, before exiting.

Environment

       The  following  environment variables may be set, and exported, to modify the behaviour of
       pdfroff.

       PDFROFF_COLLATE
              Specifies the program to be used for collation of the finished PDF document.

              This collation step may be required to move tables of contents to the start of  the
              finished PDF document, when formatting with traditional macro packages, which print
              them  at  the  end.   However,  users  should  not   normally   need   to   specify
              PDFROFF_COLLATE,  (and  indeed,  are  not  encouraged  to  do so).  If unspecified,
              pdfroff uses sed(1) by default, which normally suffices.

              If PDFROFF_COLLATE is specified, then it must act as a filter, accepting a list  of
              file  name arguments, and write its output to the standard output stream, whence it
              is piped to the PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND, to produce the finished PDF output.

              When  specifying  PDFROFF_COLLATE,  it  is  normally  necessary  to  also   specify
              PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES.

              PDFROFF_COLLATE  is  ignored,  if  pdfroff is invoked with the --no-kill-null-pages
              option.

       PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES
              Specifies options to be passed to the PDFROFF_COLLATE program.

              It should not  normally  be  necessary  to  specify  PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES.   The
              internal  default  is a sed(1) script, which is intended to remove completely blank
              pages from the collated output stream, and which  should  be  appropriate  in  most
              applications  of  pdfroff.   However, if any alternative to sed(1) is specified for
              PDFROFF_COLLATE, then it is likely that a corresponding  alternative  specification
              for PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES is required.

              As  in  the case of PDFROFF_COLLATE, PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES is ignored, if pdfroff
              is invoked with the --no-kill-null-pages option.

       PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND
              Specifies the command to be used for the final document conversion from  PostScript
              intermediate  output to PDF.  It must behave as a filter, writing its output to the
              standard output stream, and must accept an arbitrary number of files ... arguments,
              with the special case of “-” representing the standard input stream.

              If unspecified, PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND defaults to
                   gs -dBATCH -dQUIET -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
                        -sOutputFile=-

       GROFF_TMPDIR
              Identifies  the  directory  in  which  pdfroff  should  create temporary files.  If
              GROFF_TMPDIR is not  specified,  then  the  variables  TMPDIR,  TMP  and  TEMP  are
              considered  in  turn as possible temporary file repositories.  If none of these are
              set, then temporary files are created in the current directory.

       GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER
              Specifies the program to be invoked when pdfroff converts groff  PostScript  output
              to  PDF.   If  PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND is specified, then the command name it
              specifies is implicitly assigned to GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER,  overriding  any
              explicit setting specified in the environment.  If GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER is
              not specified, then pdfroff searches the process PATH, looking for a  program  with
              any  of  the  well  known  names for the Ghostscript interpreter; if no Ghostscript
              interpreter can be found, pdfroff aborts.

       GROFF_AWK_INTERPRETER
              Specifies the program to be invoked when pdfroff is extracting reference dictionary
              entries  from a groff intermediate message stream.  If GROFF_AWK_INTERPRETER is not
              specified, then pdfroff searches the process PATH, looking for any of the preferred
              programs,  gawk,  mawk,  nawk,  and awk, in that order; if none of these are found,
              pdfroff issues a warning message, and continue processing; however, in  this  case,
              no reference dictionary is created.

       OSTYPE Typically  defined  automatically  by  the  operating  system,  OSTYPE  is  used on
              Microsoft  Win32/MS-DOS  platforms  only,  to  infer  the  default   PATH_SEPARATOR
              character,  which  is  used  when  parsing  the process PATH to search for external
              helper programs.

       PATH_SEPARATOR
              If  set,  PATH_SEPARATOR  overrides  the  default  separator  character,  (‘:’   on
              POSIX/Unix  systems, inferred from OSTYPE on Microsoft Win32/MS-DOS), which is used
              when parsing the process PATH to search for external helper programs.

       SHOW_PROGRESS
              If this is set to a  non-empty  value,  then  pdfroff  always  behaves  as  if  the
              --report-progress option is specified on the command line.

Files

       Input  and output files for pdfroff may be named according to any convention of the user's
       choice.  Typically, input files may be named according to  the  choice  of  the  principal
       normatting macro package, e.g., file.ms might be an input file for formatting using the ms
       macros (s.tmac); normally, the final output file should be named file.pdf.

       Temporary files created by pdfroff are placed in the file system hierarchy,  in  or  below
       the  directory  specified  by environment variables (see section “Environment” above).  If
       mktemp(1) is available, it is invoked to create a private subdirectory  of  the  nominated
       temporary   files   directory,   (with   subdirectory   name  derived  from  the  template
       pdfroff-XXXXXXXXXX); if this subdirectory is successfully  created,  the  temporary  files
       will  be  placed  within  it,  otherwise  they  will  be  placed directly in the directory
       nominated in the environment.

       All temporary files themselves are named according to the convention pdf$$.*, where $$  is
       the  standard  shell  variable  representing the process identifier of the pdfroff process
       itself, and * represents any of the extensions used by pdfroff to identify  the  following
       temporary and intermediate files.

       pdf$$.tmp
              A  scratch  pad  file,  used to capture reference data emitted by groff, during the
              reference dictionary compilation phase.

       pdf$$.ref
              The reference dictionary, as compiled in the last but one  pass  of  the  reference
              dictionary compilation phase; (at the start of the first pass, this file is created
              empty; in successive passes, it  contains  the  reference  dictionary  entries,  as
              collected in the preceding pass).

              If  the  --reference-dictionary=name  option  is  specified, this intermediate file
              becomes permanent, and is named name, rather than pdf$$.ref.

       pdf$$.cmp
              Used to collect  reference  dictionary  entries  during  the  active  pass  of  the
              reference  dictionary  compilation phase.  At the end of any pass, when the content
              of pdf$$.cmp compares as identical to pdf$$.ref, (or the corresponding  file  named
              by  the  --reference-dictionary=name option), then reference dictionary compilation
              is terminated, and the document reference map  is  appended  to  this  intermediate
              file, for inclusion in the final formatting passes.

       pdf$$.tc
              An  intermediate  PostScript  file,  in  which  “Table  of  Contents”  entries  are
              collected, to facilitate relocation before the body text, on ultimate output to the
              Ghostscript postprocessor.

       pdf$$.ps
              An  intermediate  PostScript  file,  in  which  the body text is collected prior to
              ultimate output to the Ghostscript postprocessor, in  the  proper  sequence,  after
              pdf$$.tc.

Authors

       pdfroff was written by Keith Marshall ⟨keith.d.marshall@ntlworld.com⟩, who maintains it at
       his   groff-pdfmark   OSDN    site    ⟨https://osdn.net/users/keith/pf/groff-pdfmark/wiki/
       FrontPage⟩.  groff's version may be withdrawn in a future release.

See also

       Groff:  The  GNU  Implementation  of  troff, by Trent A. Fisher and Werner Lemberg, is the
       primary groff manual.  You can browse it interactively with “info groff”.

       Since pdfroff provides a superset of all groff capabilities,  the  above  manual,  or  its
       terser  reference  page,  groff(7)  may  also  be  considered definitive references to all
       standard capabilities of pdfroff, with this document providing the reference to  pdfroff's
       extended features.

       While  pdfroff imposes neither any restriction on, nor any requirement for, the use of any
       specific groff macro package, a number of supplied macro packages, and in particular those
       associated  with  the  package  pdfmark.tmac,  are best suited for use with pdfroff as the
       preferred formatter.

       /usr/share/doc/groff-base/pdf/pdfmark.pdf.gz
              “Portable Document Format Publishing with GNU Troff”,  by  Keith  Marshall,  offers
              detailed  documentation on the use of these packages.  This file, together with its
              source, pdfmark.ms, is part of the groff distribution.