Provided by: groff_1.22.4-10_amd64 bug

NAME

       pdfroff - create PDF documents using groff

SYNOPSIS

       pdfroff [-abcegilpstzCEGNRSUVXZ] [-d cs] [-f fam] [-F dir] [-I dir] [-L arg] [-m name]
               [-M dir] [-n num] [-o list] [-P arg] [-r cn] [-T dev] [-w name] [-W name]
               [--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 ...]

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 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 stdout 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
              stdout stream, and must accept an arbitrary number of files ... arguments, with the
              special case of - representing the stdin 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
              this  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
       formatting 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 ID 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⟩.

SEE ALSO

       See groff(1) for the definitive  reference  to  document  formatting  with  groff.   Since
       pdfroff  provides a superset of all groff capabilities, groff(1) may also be considered to
       be the definitive reference 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.  Detailed documentation on the use of these packages may be found, in
       PDF  format,  in the reference guide “Portable Document Format Publishing with GNU Troff”,
       included   in   the   installed   documentation    set    as    /usr/share/doc/groff-base/
       pdf/pdfmark.pdf.gz.