Ubuntu Manpage: gropdf - groff output driver for Portable Document Format

Name

       gropdf - groff output driver for Portable Document Format

Synopsis

       gropdf [-dels] [-F font-directory] [-I inclusion-directory] [-p paper-format] [-u [cmap-
              file]] [-y foundry] [file ...]

       gropdf --help

       gropdf -v
       gropdf --version

Description

       The GNU roff PDF output driver translates the output of troff(1)  into  Portable  Document
       Format.   Normally,  gropdf  is  invoked by groff(1) when the latter is given the “-T pdf”
       option.  (In this installation, ps is the default output device.)  Use groff's  -P  option
       to  pass any options shown above to gropdf.  If no file arguments are given, or if file is
       “-”, gropdf reads the standard input stream.  Output is written  to  the  standard  output
       stream.

       See section “Font installation” below for a guide to installing fonts for gropdf.

Options

--help displays a usage message, while -v and --version show version information; all exit
afterward.

-d Include debug information as comments within the PDF. Also produces an
uncompressed PDF.

-e Forces gropdf to embed all fonts (even the 14 base PDF fonts).

-F dir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for font, and device description
files; name is the name of the device, usually pdf.

-I dir Search the directory dir for files named in \X'pdf: pdfpic' device control
commands. -I may be specified more than once; each dir is searched in the given
order. To search the current working directory before others, add “-I .” at the
desired place; it is otherwise searched last.

-l Orient the document in landscape format.

-p paper-format
Set the physical dimensions of the output medium. This overrides the papersize,
paperlength, and paperwidth directives in the DESC file; it accepts the same
arguments as the papersize directive. See groff_font(5) for details.

-s Append a comment line to end of PDF showing statistics, i.e. number of pages in
document. Ghostscript's ps2pdf complains about this line if it is included, but
works anyway.

-u [cmap-file]
gropdf normally includes a ToUnicode CMap with any font created using text.enc as
the encoding file, this makes it easier to search for words which contain
ligatures. You can include your own CMap by specifying a cmap-file or have no CMap
at all by omitting the argument.

-y foundry
Set the foundry to use for selecting fonts of the same name.

Usage

The input to gropdf 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 pdf device uses a resolution of 72000 and a sizescale of 1000.

The device description file must contain a valid paper format; see groff_font(5). gropdf
uses the same Type 1 Adobe PostScript fonts as the grops device driver. Although the PDF
Standard allows the use of other font types (like TrueType) this implementation only
accepts the Type 1 PostScript font. Fewer Type 1 fonts are supported natively in PDF
documents than the standard 35 fonts supported by grops and all PostScript printers, but
all the fonts are available since any which aren't supported natively are automatically
embedded in the PDF.

gropdf supports the concept of foundries, that is different versions of basically the same
font. During install a Foundry file controls where fonts are found and builds groff fonts
from the files it discovers on your system.

Each font description file must contain a command

internalname psname

which says that the PostScript name of the font is psname. Lines starting with # and
blank lines are ignored. The code for each character given in the font file must
correspond to the code in the default encoding for the font. 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.

Note that gropdf is currently only able to display the first 256 glyphs in any font. This
restriction will be lifted in a later version.

gropdf can automatically include the downloadable fonts necessary to print the document.
Fonts may be in PFA or PFB format.

Any downloadable fonts which should, when required, be included by gropdf must be listed
in the file /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/download; this should consist of lines of
the form

foundry font filename

where foundry is the foundry name or blank for the default foundry. 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 must be separated by tabs
(spaces are not allowed); filename is searched for using the same mechanism that is used
for groff font metric files. The download file itself is also sought using this
mechanism. Foundry names are usually a single character (such as ‘U’ for the URW foundry)
or empty for the default foundry. This default uses the same fonts as ghostscript uses
when it embeds fonts in a PDF file.

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. The lower case greek
characters are automatically slanted (to match the SymbolSlanted font (SS) available to
PostScript). Zapf Dingbats is available as ZD; the “hand pointing left” glyph (\[lh]) is
available since it has been defined using the \X'pdf: xrev' device control command, which
reverses the direction of letters within words.

The default color for \m and \M is black.

gropdf understands some of the device control commands supported by grops(1).

\X'ps: invis'
Suppress output.

\X'ps: endinvis'
Stop suppressing output.

\X'ps: exec gsave currentpoint 2 copy translate n rotate neg exch neg exch translate'
where n is the angle of rotation. This is to support the align command in pic(1).

\X'ps: exec grestore'
Used by pic(1) to restore state after rotation.

\X'ps: exec n setlinejoin'
where n can be one of the following values.

0 = Miter join
1 = Round join
2 = Bevel join

\X'ps: exec n setlinecap'
where n can be one of the following values.

0 = Butt cap
1 = Round cap, and
2 = Projecting square cap

\X'ps: ... pdfmark'
All the pdfmark macros installed by using -m pdfmark or -m mspdf (see documentation
in pdfmark.pdf). A subset of these macros are installed automatically when you use
-Tpdf so you should not need to use “-m pdfmark” to access most PDF functionality.

gropdf also supports a subset of the commands introduced in present.tmac. Specifically it
supports:-

PAUSE
BLOCKS
BLOCKE

Which allows you to create presentation type PDFs. Many of the other commands are already
available in other macro packages.

These commands are implemented with groff X commands:-

\X'ps: exec %%%%PAUSE'
The section before this is treated as a block and is introduced using the current
BLOCK transition setting (see “\X'pdf: transition'” below). Equivalently,
.pdfpause is available as a macro.

\X'ps: exec %%%%BEGINONCE'
Any text following this command (up to %%%%ENDONCE) is shown only once, the next
%%%%PAUSE will remove it. If producing a non-presentation PDF, i.e. ignoring the
pauses, see GROPDF_NOSLIDE below, this text is ignored.

\X'ps: exec %%%%ENDONCE'
This terminates the block defined by %%%%BEGINONCE. This pair of commands is what
implements the .BLOCKS Once/.BLOCKE commands in present.tmac.

The mom macro package already integrates these extensions, so you can build slides with
mom.

If you use present.tmac with gropdf there is no need to run the program presentps(1) since
the output will already be a presentation PDF.

All other ps: tags are silently ignored.

One \X device control command used by the DVI driver is also recognised.

\X'papersize=paper-format'
where the paper-format parameter is the same as that to the papersize directive.
See groff_font(5). This means that you can alter the page size at will within the
PDF file being created by gropdf. If you do want to change the paper format, it
must be done before you start creating the page.

gropdf supports several more device control features using the pdf: tag. Some have
counterpart convenience macros that take the same arguments and behave equivalently.

\X'pdf: pdfpic file alignment width height line-length'
Place an image of the specified width containing the PDF drawing from file file of
desired width and height (if height is missing or zero then it is scaled
proportionally). If alignment is -L the drawing is left-aligned. If it is -C or
-R a line-length greater than the width of the drawing is required as well. If
width is specified as zero then the width is scaled in proportion to the height.

\X'pdf: xrev'
Toggle the reversal of glyph direction. This feature works “letter by letter”,
that is, each letter in a word is reversed left-to-right, not the entire word. One
application is the reversal of glyphs in the Zapf Dingbats font. To restore the
normal glyph orientation, repeat the command.

\X'pdf: markstart /ANN-definition'
\X'pdf: markend'
Macros that support PDF bookmarks use these calls internally to start and stop
(respectively) the placement of the bookmark's hot spot; the user will have called
“.pdfhref L” with the text of the hot spot. Normally, these are never used except
from within the pdfmark macros.

\X'pdf: marksuspend'
\X'pdf: markrestart'
If you use a page location trap to produce a header or footer, or otherwise
interrupt a document's text, you need to use these commands if a PDF hot spot
crosses a trap boundary; otherwise any text output by the trap will be marked as
part of the hot spot. To prevent this error, place these device control commands
or their corresponding convenience macros .pdfmarksuspend and .pdfmarkrestart at
the start and end of the trap macro, respectively.

\X'pdf: pagename name'
Assign the current page a name. All documents bear two default names, ‘top’ and
‘bottom’. The convenience macro for this command is .pdfpagename.

\X'pdf: switchtopage when name'
Normally each new page is appended to the end of the document, this command allows
following pages to be inserted at a ‘named’ position within the document (see
pagename command above). ‘when’ can be either ‘after’ or ‘before’. If it is
omitted it defaults to ‘before’. It should be used at the end of the page before
you want the switch to happen. This allows pages such as a TOC to be moved to
elsewhere in the document, but more esoteric uses are possible. The convenience
macro for this command is .pdfswitchtopage.

\X'pdf: transition feature mode duration dimension motion direction scale bool'
where feature can be either SLIDE or BLOCK. When it is SLIDE the transition is
used when a new slide is introduced to the screen, if BLOCK then this transition is
used for the individual blocks which make up the slide.

mode is the transition type between slides:-

Split - Two lines sweep across the screen, revealing the new page. The
lines may be either horizontal or vertical and may move inward from the
edges of the page or outward from the center, as specified by the dimension
and motion entries, respectively.
Blinds - Multiple lines, evenly spaced across the screen, synchronously
sweep in the same direction to reveal the new page. The lines may be either
horizontal or vertical, as specified by the dimension entry. Horizontal
lines move downward; vertical lines move to the right.
Box - A rectangular box sweeps inward from the edges of the page or outward
from the center, as specified by the motion entry, revealing the new page.
Wipe - A single line sweeps across the screen from one edge to the other in
the direction specified by the direction entry, revealing the new page.
Dissolve - The old page dissolves gradually to reveal the new one.
Glitter - Similar to Dissolve, except that the effect sweeps across the page
in a wide band moving from one side of the screen to the other in the
direction specified by the direction entry.
R - The new page simply replaces the old one with no special transition
effect; the direction entry shall be ignored.
Fly - (PDF 1.5) Changes are flown out or in (as specified by motion), in the
direction specified by direction, to or from a location that is offscreen
except when direction is None.
Push - (PDF 1.5) The old page slides off the screen while the new page
slides in, pushing the old page out in the direction specified by direction.
Cover - (PDF 1.5) The new page slides on to the screen in the direction
specified by direction, covering the old page.
Uncover - (PDF 1.5) The old page slides off the screen in the direction
specified by direction, uncovering the new page in the direction specified
by direction.
Fade - (PDF 1.5) The new page gradually becomes visible through the old one.

duration is the length of the transition in seconds (default 1).

dimension (Optional; Split and Blinds transition styles only) The dimension in
which the specified transition effect shall occur: H Horizontal, or V Vertical.

motion (Optional; Split, Box and Fly transition styles only) The direction of
motion for the specified transition effect: I Inward from the edges of the page, or
O Outward from the center of the page.

direction (Optional; Wipe, Glitter, Fly, Cover, Uncover and Push transition styles
only) The direction in which the specified transition effect shall moves, expressed
in degrees counterclockwise starting from a left-to-right direction. If the value
is a number, it shall be one of: 0 = Left to right, 90 = Bottom to top (Wipe only),
180 = Right to left (Wipe only), 270 = Top to bottom, 315 = Top-left to bottom-
right (Glitter only) The value can be None, which is relevant only for the Fly
transition when the value of scale is not 1.0.

scale (Optional; PDF 1.5; Fly transition style only) The starting or ending scale
at which the changes shall be drawn. If motion specifies an inward transition, the
scale of the changes drawn shall progress from scale to 1.0 over the course of the
transition. If motion specifies an outward transition, the scale of the changes
drawn shall progress from 1.0 to scale over the course of the transition

bool (Optional; PDF 1.5; Fly transition style only) If true, the area that shall be
flown in is rectangular and opaque.

This command can be used by calling the macro .pdftransition using the parameters
described above. Any of the parameters may be replaced with a "." which signifies
the parameter retains its previous value, also any trailing missing parameters are
ignored.

Note: not all PDF Readers support any or all these transitions.

\X'pdf: background cmd left top right bottom weight'
\X'pdf: background off'
\X'pdf: background footnote bottom'
produces a background rectangle on the page, where

cmd is the command, which can be any of “page|fill|box” in combination. Thus,
“pagefill” would draw a rectangle which covers the whole current page size
(in which case the rest of the parameters can be omitted because the box
dimensions are taken from the current media size). “boxfill”, on the other
hand, requires the given dimensions to place the box. Including “fill” in
the command will paint the rectangle with the current fill colour (as with
\M[]) and including “box” will give the rectangle a border in the current
stroke colour (as with \m[]).

cmd may also be “off” on its own, which will terminate drawing the current
box. If you have specified a page colour with “pagefill”, it is always the
first box in the stack, and if you specify it again, it will replace the
first entry. Be aware that the “pagefill” box renders the page opaque, so
tools that “watermark” PDF pages are unlikely to be successful. To return
the background to transparent, issue an “off” command with no other boxes
open.

Finally, cmd may be “footnote” followed by a new value for bottom, which
will be used for all open boxes on the current page. This is to allow room
for footnote areas that grow while a page is processed (to accommodate
multiple footnotes, for instance). (If the value is negative, it is used as
an offset from the bottom of the page.)

left
top
right
bottom are the coordinates of the box. The top and bottom coordinates are the
minimum and maximum for the box, since the actual start of the box is
groff's drawing position when you issue the command, and the bottom of the
box is the point where you turn the box “off”. The top and bottom
coordinates are used only if the box drawing extends onto the next page;
ordinarily, they would be set to the header and footer margins.

weight provides the line width for the border if “box” is included in the command.

The convenience macro for this escape sequence is .pdfbackground. An sboxes macro
file is also available; see groff_tmac(5).

Macros
gropdf's support macros in pdf.tmac define the convenience macros described above. Some
features have no direct device control command counterpart.

.pdfinfo /field content ...
Define PDF metadata. field may be be one of Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, or
another datum supported by the PDF standard or your reader. field must be prefixed
with a slash.

Importing graphics
gropdf supports only the inclusion of other PDF files for inline images. Such a PDF file
may, however, contain any of the graphic formats supported by the PDF standard, such as
JPEG/JFIF, PNG, and GIF. Any application that outputs PDF can thus be used to prepare
files for embedding in documents processed by groff and gropdf.

The PDF file you wish to insert must be a single page and the drawing must just fit inside
the media size of the PDF file. In inkscape(1) or gimp(1), for example, make sure the
canvas size just fits the image.

The PDF parser gropdf implements has not been rigorously tested with all applications that
produce PDF. If you find a single-page PDF which fails to import properly, try processing
it with the pdftk(1) program.
pdftk existing-file output new-file
You may find that new-file imports successfully.

TrueType and other font formats
gropdf does not yet support any font formats besides Adobe Type 1 (PFA or PFB).

Font installation

The following is a step-by-step font installation guide for gropdf.

• Convert your font to something groff understands. This is a PostScript Type 1 font in
PFA or PFB format, together with an AFM file. A PFA file begins as follows.
%!PS-AdobeFont-1.0:
A PFB file contains this string as well, preceded by some non-printing bytes. In the
following steps, we will consider the use of CTAN's BrushScriptX-Italic ⟨https://
ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/brushscr⟩ font in PFA format.

• Convert the AFM file to a groff font description file with the afmtodit(1) program. For
instance,
$ afmtodit BrushScriptX-Italic.afm text.map BSI
converts the Adobe Font Metric file BrushScriptX-Italic.afm to the groff font
description file BSI.

If you have a font family which provides regular upright (roman), bold, italic, and
bold-italic styles, (where “italic” may be “oblique” or “slanted”), we recommend using
R, B, I, and BI, respectively, as suffixes to the groff font family name to enable
groff's font family and style selection features. An example is groff's built-in
support for Times: the font family name is abbreviated as T, and the groff font names
are therefore TR, TB, TI, and TBI. In our example, however, the BrushScriptX font is
available in a single style only, italic.

• Install the groff font description file(s) in a devpdf subdirectory in the search path
that groff uses for device and font file descriptions. See the GROFF_FONT_PATH entry in
section “Environment” of troff(1) for the current value of the font search path. While
groff doesn't directly use AFM files, it is a good idea to store them alongside its font
description files.

• Register fonts in the devpdf/download file so they can be located for embedding in PDF
files gropdf generates. Only the first download file encountered in the font search
path is read. If in doubt, copy the default download file (see section “Files” below)
to the first directory in the font search path and add your fonts there. The PostScript
font name used by gropdf is stored in the internalname field in the groff font
description file. (This name does not necessarily resemble the font's file name.) If
the font in our example had originated from a foundry named Z, we would add the
following line to download.
Z→BrushScriptX-Italic→BrushScriptX-Italic.pfa
A tab character, depicted as →, separates the fields. The default foundry has no name:
its field is empty and entries corresponding to it start with a tab character, as will
the one in our example.

• Test the selection and embedding of the new font.
printf "\\f[BSI]Hello, world!\n" | groff -T pdf -P -e >hello.pdf
see hello.pdf

Environment

       GROFF_FONT_PATH
              A  list  of  directories in which to seek the selected output device's directory of
              device and font description files.  If, in the download file,  the  font  file  has
              been  specified  with  a  full path, no directories are searched.  See troff(1) and
              groff_font(5).

       GROPDF_NOSLIDE
              If set and evaluates to a true value (to Perl), gropdf ignores commands specific to
              presentation PDFs, producing a normal PDF instead.

       SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
              A  timestamp  (expressed  as  seconds  since  the  Unix epoch) to use as the output
              creation timestamp in place of the current time.  The time is converted  to  human-
              readable form using Perl's gmtime() function and recorded in a PDF comment.

       TZ     The  time  zone to use when converting the current time to human-readable form; see
              tzset(3).  If SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is used, it is always converted  to  human-readable
              form using UTC.

Files

       /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/DESC
              describes the pdf output device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/F
              describes the font known as F on device pdf.

       /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/U-F
              describes  the  font  from the URW foundry (versus the Adobe default) known as F on
              device pdf.

       /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/download
              lists fonts available for embedding within the PDF document (by analogy to  the  ps
              device's downloadable font support).

       /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/Foundry
              is a data file used by the groff build system to locate PostScript Type 1 fonts.

       /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/enc/text.enc
              describes  the  encoding  scheme used by most PostScript Type 1 fonts; the encoding
              directive of font description files for the pdf device refers to it.

       /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/pdf.tmac
              defines macros for use with the pdf output device.  It is automatically  loaded  by
              troffrc when the pdf output device is selected.

       /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/pdfpic.tmac
              defines the PDFPIC macro for embedding images in a document; see groff_tmac(5).  It
              is automatically loaded by troffrc.

Authors

       gropdf was written and is maintained by Deri James ⟨deri@chuzzlewit.myzen.co.uk⟩.