Provided by: groff_1.23.0-2_amd64 
Name
groff - GNU roff language reference
Description
groff is short for GNU roff, a free reimplementation of the AT&T device-independent troff
typesetting system. See roff(7) for a survey of and background on roff systems.
This document is intended as a reference. The primary groff manual, Groff: The GNU
Implementation of troff, by Trent A. Fisher and Werner Lemberg, is a better resource for
learners, containing many examples and much discussion. It is written in Texinfo; you can
browse it interactively with “info groff”. Additional formats, including plain text,
HTML, DVI, and PDF, may be available in /usr/share/doc/groff-base.
groff is also a name for an extended dialect of the roff language. We use “roff” to
denote features that are universal, or nearly so, among implementations of this family.
We apply the term “groff” to the language documented here, the GNU implementation of the
overall system, the project that develops that system, and the command of that name.
GNU troff, installed on this system as troff(1), is the formatter: a program that reads
device and font descriptions (groff_font(5)), interprets the groff language expressed in
text input files, and translates that input into a device-independent output format
(groff_out(5)) that is usually then post-processed by an output driver to produce
PostScript, PDF, HTML, DVI, or terminal output.
Input format
Input to GNU troff is organized into lines separated by the Unix newline character
(U+000A), and must be in one of two character encodings it can recognize: IBM code page
1047 on EBCDIC systems, and ISO Latin-1 (8859-1) otherwise. Use of ISO 646-1991:IRV (“US-
ASCII”) or (equivalently) the “Basic Latin” subset of ISO 10646 (“Unicode”) is
recommended; see groff_char(7). The preconv(1) preprocessor transforms other encodings,
including UTF-8, to satisfy troff's requirements.
Syntax characters
Several input characters are syntactically significant to groff.
. A dot at the beginning of an input line marks it as a control line. It can also
follow the .el and .nop requests, and the condition in .if, .ie, and .while requests.
The control character invokes requests and calls macros by the name that follows it.
The .cc request can change the control character.
' The neutral apostrophe is the no-break control character, recognized where the control
character is. It suppresses the (first) break implied by the .bp, .cf, .fi, .fl, .in,
.nf, .rj, .sp, .ti, and .trf requests. The requested operation takes effect at the
next break. It makes .br nilpotent. The no-break control character can be changed
with the .c2 request. When formatted, “'” may be typeset as a typographical quotation
mark; use the \[aq] special character escape sequence to format a neutral apostrophe
glyph.
" The neutral double quote can be used to enclose arguments to macros and strings, and
is required if those arguments contain space or tab characters. In the .ds, .ds1,
.as, and .as1 requests, an initial neutral double quote in the second argument is
stripped off to allow embedding of leading spaces. To include a double quote inside a
quoted argument, use the \[dq] special character escape sequence (which also serves to
typeset the glyph in text).
\ A backslash introduces an escape sequence. The escape character can be changed with
the .ec request; .eo disables escape sequence recognition. Use the \[rs] special
character escape sequence to format a backslash glyph, and \e to typeset the glyph of
the current escape character.
( An opening parenthesis is special only in certain escape sequences; when recognized,
it introduces an argument of exactly two characters. groff offers the more flexible
square bracket syntax.
[ An opening bracket is special only in certain escape sequences; when recognized, it
introduces an argument (list) of any length, not including a closing bracket.
] A closing bracket is special only when an escape sequence using an opening bracket as
an argument delimiter is being interpreted. It ends the argument (list).
Additionally, the Control+A character (U+0001) in text is interpreted as a leader (see
below).
Horizontal white space characters are significant to groff, but trailing spaces on text
lines are ignored.
space Space characters separate arguments in request invocations, macro calls, and
string interpolations. In text, they separate words. Multiple adjacent space
characters in text cause groff to attempt end-of-sentence detection on the
preceding word (and trailing punctuation). The amount of space between words and
sentences is controlled by the .ss request. When filling is enabled (the
default), a line may be broken at a space. When adjustment is enabled (the
default), inter-word spaces are expanded until the output line reaches the
configured length. An adjustable but non-breaking space is available with \~. To
get a space of fixed width, use one of the escape sequences ‘\ ’ (the escape
character followed by a space), \0, \|, \^, or \h; see section “Escape sequences”
below.
newline In text, a newline puts an inter-word space onto the output and, if filling is
enabled, triggers end-of-sentence recognition on the preceding text. See section
“Line continuation” below.
tab A tab character in text causes the drawing position to advance to the next defined
tab stop.
Tabs and leaders
The formatter interprets input horizontal tab characters (“tabs”) and Control+A characters
(“leaders”) into movements to the next tab stop. Tabs simply move to the next tab stop;
leaders place enough periods to fill the space. Tab stops are by default located every
half inch measured from the drawing position corresponding to the beginning of the input
line; see section “Page geometry” of roff(7). Tabs and leaders do not cause breaks and
therefore do not interrupt filling. Tab stops can be configured with the ta request, and
tab and leader glyphs with the tc and lc requests, respectively.
Line continuation
When filling is enabled, input and output line breaks generally do not correspond. The
roff language therefore distinguishes input and output line continuation.
A backslash \ immediately followed by a newline, sometimes discussed as \newline,
suppresses the effects of that newline on the input. The next input line thus retains the
classification of its predecessor as a control or text line. \newline is useful for
managing line lengths in the input during document maintenance; you can break an input
line in the middle of a request invocation, macro call, or escape sequence. Input line
continuation is invisible to the formatter, with two exceptions: the | operator recognizes
the new input line, and the input line counter register .c is incremented.
The \c escape sequence continues an output line. Nothing on the input line after it is
formatted. In contrast to \newline, a line after \c is treated as a new input line, so a
control character is recognized at its beginning. The visual results depend on whether
filling is enabled. An intervening control line that causes a break overrides \c,
flushing out the pending output line in the usual way. The register .int contains a
positive value if the last output line was continued with \c; this datum is associated
with the environment.
Colors
groff supports color output with a variety of color spaces and up to 16 bits per channel.
Some devices, particularly terminals, may be more limited. When color support is enabled,
two colors are current at any given time: the stroke color, with which glyphs, rules
(lines), and geometric objects like circles and polygons are drawn, and the fill color,
which can be used to paint the interior of a closed geometric figure. The color,
defcolor, gcolor, and fcolor requests; \m and \M escape sequences; and .color, .m, and .M
registers exercise color support.
Each output device has a color named “default”, which cannot be redefined. A device's
default stroke and fill colors are not necessarily the same. For the dvi, html, pdf, ps,
and xhtml output devices, troff automatically loads a macro file defining many color names
at startup. By the same mechanism, the devices supported by grotty(1) recognize the eight
standard ISO 6429/ECMA-48 color names (also known vulgarly as “ANSI colors”).
Measurements
Numeric parameters that specify measurements are expressed as integers or decimal
fractions with an optional scaling unit suffixed. A scaling unit is a letter that
immediately follows the last digit of a number. Digits after the decimal point are
optional.
Measurements are scaled by the scaling unit and stored internally (with any fractional
part discarded) in basic units. The device resolution can therefore be obtained by
storing a value of “1i” to a register. The only constraint on the basic unit is that it
is at least as small as any other unit.
u Basic unit.
i Inch; defined as 2.54 centimeters.
c Centimeter.
p Point; a typesetter's unit used for measuring type size. There are 72 points to an
inch.
P Pica; another typesetter's unit. There are 6 picas to an inch and 12 points to a
pica.
s, z Scaled points and multiplication by the output device's sizescale parameter,
respectively.
f Multiplication by 65,536; scales decimal fractions in the interval [0, 1] to 16-bit
unsigned integers.
The magnitudes of other scaling units depend on the text formatting parameters in effect.
m Em; an em is equal to the current type size in points.
n En; an en is one-half em.
v Vee; distance between text baselines.
M Hundredth of an em.
Motion quanta
An output device's basic unit u is not necessarily its smallest addressable length; u can
be smaller to avoid problems with integer roundoff. The minimum distances that a device
can work with in the horizontal and vertical directions are termed its motion quanta,
stored in the .H and .V registers, respectively. Measurements are rounded to applicable
motion quanta. Half-quantum fractions round toward zero.
Default units
A general-purpose register (one created or updated with the nr request; see section
“Registers” below) is implicitly dimensionless, or reckoned in basic units if interpreted
in a measurement context. But it is convenient for many requests and escape sequences to
infer a scaling unit for an argument if none is specified. An explicit scaling unit (not
after a closing parenthesis) can override an undesirable default. Effectively, the
default unit is suffixed to the expression if a scaling unit is not already present. GNU
troff's use of integer arithmetic should also be kept in mind; see below.
Numeric expressions
A numeric expression evaluates to an integer. The following operators are recognized.
+ addition
- subtraction
* multiplication
/ truncating division
% modulus
────────────────────────────────────────────
unary + assertion, motion, incrementation
unary - negation, motion, decrementation
────────────────────────────────────────────
; scaling
>? maximum
<? minimum
────────────────────────────────────────────
< less than
> greater than
<= less than or equal
>= greater than or equal
= equal
== equal
────────────────────────────────────────────
& logical conjunction (“and”)
: logical disjunction (“or”)
! logical complementation (“not”)
────────────────────────────────────────────
( ) precedence
────────────────────────────────────────────
| boundary-relative motion
troff provides a set of mathematical and logical operators familiar to programmers—as well
as some unusual ones—but supports only integer arithmetic. (Provision is made for
interpreting and reporting decimal fractions in certain cases.) The internal data type
used for computing results is usually a 32-bit signed integer, which suffices to represent
magnitudes within a range of ±2 billion. (If that's not enough, see groff_tmac(5) for the
62bit.tmac macro package.)
Arithmetic infix operators perform a function on the numeric expressions to their left and
right; they are + (addition), - (subtraction), * (multiplication), / (truncating
division), and % (modulus). Truncating division rounds to the integer nearer to zero, no
matter how large the fractional portion. Overflow and division (or modulus) by zero are
errors and abort evaluation of a numeric expression.
Arithmetic unary operators operate on the numeric expression to their right; they are -
(negation) and + (assertion—for completeness; it does nothing). The unary minus must
often be used with parentheses to avoid confusion with the decrementation operator,
discussed below.
The sign of the modulus of operands of mixed signs is determined by the sign of the first.
Division and modulus operators satisfy the following property: given a dividend a and a
divisor b, a quotient q formed by “(a / b)” and a remainder r by “(a % b)”, then
qb + r = a.
GNU troff's scaling operator, used with parentheses as (c;e), evaluates a numeric
expression e using c as the default scaling unit. If c is omitted, scaling units are
ignored in the evaluation of e. GNU troff also provides a pair of operators to compute
the extrema of two operands: >? (maximum) and <? (minimum).
Comparison operators comprise < (less than), > (greater than), <= (less than or equal), >=
(greater than or equal), and = (equal). == is a synonym for =. When evaluated, a
comparison is replaced with “0” if it is false and “1” if true. In the roff language,
positive values are true, others false.
We can operate on truth values with the logical operators & (logical conjunction or “and”)
and : (logical disjunction or “or”). They evaluate as comparison operators do. A logical
complementation (“not”) operator, !, works only within “if”, “ie”, and “while” requests.
Furthermore, ! is recognized only at the beginning of a numeric expression not contained
by another numeric expression. In other words, it must be the “outermost” operator.
Including it elsewhere in the expression produces a warning in the “number” category (see
troff(1)), and its expression evaluates false. This unfortunate limitation maintains
compatibility with AT&T troff. Test a numeric expression for falsity by comparing it to a
false value.
The roff language has no operator precedence: expressions are evaluated strictly from left
to right, in contrast to schoolhouse arithmetic. Use parentheses ( ) to impose a desired
precedence upon subexpressions.
For many requests and escape sequences that cause motion on the page, the unary operators
+ and - work differently when leading a numeric expression. They then indicate a motion
relative to the drawing position: positive is down in vertical contexts, right in
horizontal ones.
+ and - are also treated differently by the following requests and escape sequences: bp,
in, ll, pl, pn, po, ps, pvs, rt, ti, \H, \R, and \s. Here, leading plus and minus signs
serve as incrementation and decrementation operators, respectively. To negate an
expression, subtract it from zero or include the unary minus in parentheses with its
argument.
A leading | operator indicates a motion relative not to the drawing position but to a
boundary. For horizontal motions, the measurement specifies a distance relative to a
drawing position corresponding to the beginning of the input line. By default, tab stops
reckon movements in this way. Most escape sequences do not; | tells them to do so. For
vertical motions, the | operator specifies a distance from the first text baseline on the
page or in the current diversion, using the current vertical spacing.
The \B escape sequence tests its argument for validity as a numeric expression.
A register interpolated as an operand in a numeric expression must have an Arabic format;
luckily, this is the default.
Due to the way arguments are parsed, spaces are not allowed in numeric expressions unless
the (sub)expression containing them is surrounded by parentheses.
Identifiers
An identifier labels a GNU troff datum such as a register, name (macro, string, or
diversion), typeface, color, special character, character class, environment, or stream.
Valid identifiers consist of one or more ordinary characters. An ordinary character is an
input character that is not the escape character, a leader, tab, newline, or invalid as
GNU troff input.
Invalid input characters are subset of control characters (from the sets “C0 Controls” and
“C1 Controls” as Unicode describes them). When troff encounters one in an identifier, it
produces a warning in category “input” (see section “Warnings” in troff(1)). They are
removed during interpretation: an identifier “foo”, followed by an invalid character and
then “bar”, is processed as “foobar”.
On a machine using the ISO 646, 8859, or 10646 character encodings, invalid input
characters are 0x00, 0x08, 0x0B, 0x0D–0x1F, and 0x80–0x9F. On an EBCDIC host, they are
0x00–0x01, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0B, 0x0D–0x14, 0x17–0x1F, and 0x30–0x3F. Some of these code
points are used by troff internally, making it non-trivial to extend the program to accept
UTF-8 or other encodings that use characters from these ranges.
An identifier with a closing bracket (“]”) in its name can't be accessed with bracket-form
escape sequences that expect an identifier as a parameter. Similarly, the identifier “(”
can't be interpolated except with bracket forms.
If you begin a macro, string, or diversion name with either of the characters “[” or “]”,
you foreclose use of the refer(1) preprocessor, which recognizes “.[” and “.]” as
bibliographic reference delimiters.
The escape sequence \A tests its argument for validity as an identifier.
How GNU troff handles the interpretation of an undefined identifier depends on the
context. There is no way to invoke an undefined request; such syntax is interpreted as a
macro call instead. If the identifier is interpreted as a string, macro, or diversion,
troff emits a warning in category “mac”, defines it as empty, and interpolates nothing.
If the identifier is interpreted as a register, troff emits a warning in category “reg”,
initializes it to zero, and interpolates that value. See section “Warnings” in troff(1),
and subsection “Interpolating registers” and section “Strings” below. Attempting to use
an undefined typeface, style, special character, color, character class, environment, or
stream generally provokes an error diagnostic.
Identifiers for requests, macros, strings, and diversions share one name space; special
characters and character classes another. No other object types do.
Control characters
Control characters are recognized only at the beginning of an input line, or at the
beginning of the branch of a control structure request; see section “Control structures”
below.
A few requests cause a break implicitly; use the no-break control character to prevent the
break. Break suppression is its sole behavioral distinction. Employing the no-break
control character to invoke requests that don't cause breaks is harmless but poor style.
The control character “.” and the no-break control character “'” can be changed with the
cc and c2 requests, respectively. Within a macro definition, register .br indicates the
control character used to call it.
Invoking requests
A control character is optionally followed by tabs and/or spaces and then an identifier
naming a request or macro. The invocation of an unrecognized request is interpreted as a
macro call. Defining a macro with the same name as a request replaces the request.
Deleting a request name with the rm request makes it unavailable. The als request can
alias requests, permitting them to be wrapped or non-destructively replaced. See section
“Strings” below.
There is no inherent limit on argument length or quantity. Most requests take one or more
arguments, and ignore any they do not expect. A request may be separated from its
arguments by tabs or spaces, but only spaces can separate an argument from its successor.
Only one between arguments is necessary; any excess is ignored. GNU troff does not allow
tabs for argument separation.
Generally, a space within a request argument is not relevant, not meaningful, or is
supported by bespoke provisions, as with the tl request's delimiters. Some requests, like
ds, interpret the remainder of the control line as a single argument. See section
“Strings” below.
Spaces and tabs immediately after a control character are ignored. Commonly, authors
structure the source of documents or macro files with them.
Calling macros
If a macro of the desired name does not exist when called, it is created, assigned an
empty definition, and a warning in category “mac” is emitted. Calling an undefined macro
does end a macro definition naming it as its end macro (see section “Writing macros”
below).
To embed spaces within a macro argument, enclose the argument in neutral double quotes
‘"’. Horizontal motion escape sequences are sometimes a better choice for arguments to be
formatted as text.
The foregoing raises the question of how to embed neutral double quotes or backslashes in
macro arguments when those characters are desired as literals. In GNU troff, the special
character escape sequence \[rs] produces a backslash and \[dq] a neutral double quote.
In GNU troff's AT&T compatibility mode, these characters remain available as \(rs and
\(dq, respectively. AT&T troff did not consistently define these special characters, but
its descendants can be made to support them. See groff_font(5). If even that is not
feasible, see the “Calling Macros” section of the groff Texinfo manual for the complex
macro argument quoting rules of AT&T troff.
Using escape sequences
Whereas requests must occur on control lines, escape sequences can occur intermixed with
text and may appear in arguments to requests, macros, and other escape sequences. An
escape sequence is introduced by the escape character, a backslash \. The next character
selects the escape's function.
Escape sequences vary in length. Some take an argument, and of those, some have different
syntactical forms for a one-character, two-character, or arbitrary-length argument.
Others accept only an arbitrary-length argument. In the former scheme, a one-character
argument follows the function character immediately, an opening parenthesis “(” introduces
a two-character argument (no closing parenthesis is used), and an argument of arbitrary
length is enclosed in brackets “[]”. In the latter scheme, the user selects a delimiter
character. A few escape sequences are idiosyncratic, and support both of the foregoing
conventions (\s), designate their own termination sequence (\?), consume input until the
next newline (\!, \", \#), or support an additional modifier character (\s again, and \n).
If an escape character is followed by a character that does not identify a defined
operation, the escape character is ignored (producing a diagnostic of the “escape” warning
category, which is not enabled by default) and the following character is processed
normally.
Escape sequence interpolation is of higher precedence than escape sequence argument
interpretation. This rule affords flexibility in using escape sequences to construct
parameters to other escape sequences.
The escape character can be interpolated (\e). Requests permit the escape mechanism to be
deactivated (eo) and restored, or the escape character changed (ec), and to save and
restore it (ecs and ecr).
Delimiters
Some escape sequences that require parameters use delimiters. The neutral apostrophe ' is
a popular choice and shown in this document. The neutral double quote " is also commonly
seen. Letters, numerals, and leaders can be used. Punctuation characters are likely
better choices, except for those defined as infix operators in numeric expressions; see
below.
The following escape sequences don't take arguments and thus are allowed as delimiters:
\space, \%, \|, \^, \{, \}, \', \`, \-, \_, \!, \?, \), \/, \,, \&, \:, \~, \0, \a, \c,
\d, \e, \E, \p, \r, \t, and \u. However, using them this way is discouraged; they can
make the input confusing to read.
A few escape sequences, \A, \b, \o, \w, \X, and \Z, accept a newline as a delimiter.
Newlines that serve as delimiters continue to be recognized as input line terminators.
Use of newlines as delimiters in escape sequences is also discouraged.
Finally, the escape sequences \D, \h, \H, \l, \L, \N, \R, \s, \S, \v, and \x prohibit many
delimiters.
• the numerals 0–9 and the decimal point “.”
• the (single-character) operators +-/*%<>=&:()
• any escape sequences other than \%, \:, \{, \}, \', \`, \-, \_, \!, \/, \c, \e,
and \p
Delimiter syntax is complex and flexible primarily for historical reasons; the foregoing
restrictions need be kept in mind mainly when using groff in AT&T compatibility mode. GNU
troff keeps track of the nesting depth of escape sequence interpolations, so the only
characters you need to avoid using as delimiters are those that appear in the arguments
you input, not any that result from interpolation. Typically, ' works fine. See section
“Implementation differences” in groff_diff(7).
Dummy characters
As discussed in roff(7), the first character on an input line is treated specially.
Further, formatting a glyph has many consequences on formatter state (see section
“Environments” below). Occasionally, we want to escape this context or embrace some of
those consequences without actually rendering a glyph to the output. \& interpolates a
dummy character, which is constitutive of output but invisible. Its presence alters the
interpretation context of a subsequent input character, and enjoys several applications:
preventing the insertion of extra space after an end-of-sentence character, preventing
interpretation of a control character at the beginning of an input line, preventing
kerning between two glyphs, and permitting the tr request to remap a character to
“nothing”. \) works as \& does, except that it does not cancel a pending end-of-sentence
state.
Control structures
groff has “if” and “while” control structures like other languages. However, the syntax
for grouping multiple input lines in the branches or bodies of these structures is
unusual.
They have a common form: the request name is (except for .el “else”) followed by a
conditional expression cond-expr; the remainder of the line, anything, is interpreted as
if it were an input line. Any quantity of spaces between arguments to requests serves
only to separate them; leading spaces in anything are therefore not seen. anything
effectively cannot be omitted; if cond-expr is true and anything is empty, the newline at
the end of the control line is interpreted as a blank line (and therefore a blank text
line).
It is frequently desirable for a control structure to govern more than one request, macro
call, or text line, or a combination of the foregoing. The opening and closing brace
escape sequences \{ and \} perform such grouping. Brace escape sequences outside of
control structures have no meaning and produce no output.
\{ should appear (after optional spaces and tabs) immediately subsequent to the request's
conditional expression. \} should appear on a line with other occurrences of itself as
necessary to match \{ sequences. It can be preceded by a control character, spaces, and
tabs. Input after any quantity of \} sequences on the same line is processed only if all
the preceding conditions to which they correspond are true. Furthermore, a \} closing the
body of a .while request must be the last such escape sequence on an input line.
Conditional expressions
The .if, .ie, and .while requests test the truth values of numeric expressions. They also
support several additional Boolean operators; the members of this expanded class are
termed conditional expressions; their truth values are as shown below.
cond-expr... ...is true if...
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
's1's2' s1 produces the same formatted output as s2.
c g a glyph g is available.
d m a string, macro, diversion, or request m is defined.
e the current page number is even.
F f a font named f is available.
m c a color named c is defined.
n the formatter is in nroff mode.
o the current page number is odd.
r n a register named n is defined.
S s a font style named s is available.
t the formatter is in troff mode.
v n/a (historical artifact; always false).
If the first argument to an .if, .ie, or .while request begins with a non-alphanumeric
character apart from ! (see below); it performs an output comparison test. Shown first in
the table above, the output comparison operator interpolates a true value if formatting
its comparands s1 and s2 produces the same output commands. Other delimiters can be used
in place of the neutral apostrophes. troff formats s1 and s2 in separate environments;
after the comparison, the resulting data are discarded. The resulting glyph properties,
including font family, style, size, and slant, must match, but not necessarily the
requests and/or escape sequences used to obtain them. Motions must match in orientation
and magnitude to within the applicable horizontal or vertical motion quantum of the
device, after rounding.
Surround the comparands with \? to avoid formatting them; this causes them to be compared
character by character, as with string comparisons in other programming languages. Since
comparands protected with \? are read in copy mode, they need not even be valid groff
syntax. The escape character is still lexically recognized, however, and consumes the
next character.
The above operators can't be combined with most others, but a leading “!”, not followed
immediately by spaces or tabs, complements an expression. Spaces and tabs are optional
immediately after the “c”, “d”, “F”, “m”, “r”, and “S” operators, but right after “!”,
they end the predicate and the conditional evaluates true. (This bizarre behavior
maintains compatibility with AT&T troff.)
Syntax reference conventions
In the following request and escape sequence specifications, most argument names were
chosen to be descriptive. A few denotations may require introduction.
c denotes a single input character.
font a font either specified as a font name or a numeric mounting position.
anything all characters up to the end of the line, to the ending delimiter for the
escape sequence, or within \{ and \}. Escape sequences may generally be
used freely in anything, except when it is read in copy mode.
message is a character sequence to be emitted on the standard error stream.
Special character escape sequences are not interpreted.
n is a numeric expression that evaluates to a non-negative integer.
npl is a numeric expression constituting a count of subsequent productive
input lines; that is, those that directly produce formatted output. Text
lines produce output, as do control lines containing requests like .tl or
escape sequences like \D. Macro calls are not themselves productive, but
their interpolated contents can be.
±N is a numeric expression with a meaning dependent on its sign.
If a numeric expression presented as ±N starts with a ‘+’ sign, an increment in the amount
of of N is applied to the value applicable to the request or escape sequence. If it
starts with a ‘-’ sign, a decrement of magnitude N is applied instead. Without a sign, N
replaces any existing value. A leading minus sign in N is always interpreted as a
decrementation operator, not an algebraic sign. To assign a register a negative value or
the negated value of another register, enclose it with its operand in parentheses or
subtract it from zero. If a prior value does not exist (the register was undefined), an
increment or decrement is applied as if to 0.
Request short reference
Not all details of request behavior are outlined here. See the groff Texinfo manual or,
for features new to GNU troff, groff_diff(7).
.ab Abort processing; exit with failure status.
.ab message
Abort processing; write message to the standard error stream and exit with
failure status.
.ad Enable output line alignment and adjustment using the mode stored in \n[.j].
.ad c Enable output line alignment and adjustment in mode c (c=b,c,l,n,r). Sets
\n[.j].
.af register c
Assign format c to register, where c is “i”, “I”, “a”, “A”, or a sequence of
decimal digits whose quantity denotes the minimum width in digits to be used
when the register is interpolated. “i” and “a” indicate Roman numerals and
basic Latin alphabetics, respectively, in the lettercase specified. The default
is 0.
.aln new old
Create alias (additional name) new for existing register named old.
.als new old
Create alias (additional name) new for existing request, string, macro, or
diversion old.
.am macro Append to macro until .. is encountered.
.am macro end
Append to macro until .end is called.
.am1 macro
Same as .am but with compatibility mode switched off during macro expansion.
.am1 macro end
Same as .am but with compatibility mode switched off during macro expansion.
.ami macro
Append to a macro whose name is contained in the string macro until .. is
encountered.
.ami macro end
Append to a macro indirectly. macro and end are strings whose contents are
interpolated for the macro name and the end macro, respectively.
.ami1 macro
Same as .ami but with compatibility mode switched off during macro expansion.
.ami1 macro end
Same as .ami but with compatibility mode switched off during macro expansion.
.as name Create string name with empty contents; no operation if name already exists.
.as name contents
Append contents to string name.
.as1 string
.as1 string contents
As .as, but with compatibility mode disabled when contents interpolated.
.asciify diversion
Unformat ASCII characters, spaces, and some escape sequences in diversion.
.backtrace
Write the state of the input stack to the standard error stream. See the -b
option of groff(1).
.bd font Stop emboldening font font.
.bd font n
Embolden font by overstriking its glyphs offset by n-1 units. See register .b.
.bd special-font font
Stop emboldening special-font when font is selected.
.bd special-font font n
Embolden special-font, overstriking its glyphs offset by n-1 units when font is
selected. See register .b.
.blm Unset blank line macro (trap). Restore default handling of blank lines.
.blm name Set blank line macro (trap) to name.
.box Stop directing output to current diversion; any pending output line is
discarded.
.box name Direct output to diversion name, omitting a partially collected line.
.boxa Stop appending output to current diversion; any pending output line is
discarded.
.boxa name
Append output to diversion name, omitting a partially collected line.
.bp Break page and start a new one.
.bp ±N Break page, starting a new one numbered ±N.
.br Break output line.
.brp Break output line; adjust if applicable.
.break Break out of a while loop.
.c2 Reset no-break control character to “'”.
.c2 o Recognize ordinary character o as no-break control character.
.cc Reset control character to ‘.’.
.cc o Recognize ordinary character o as the control character.
.ce Break, center the output of the next productive input line without filling, and
break again.
.ce npl Break, center the output of the next npl productive input lines without filling,
then break again. If npl ≤ 0, stop centering.
.cf file Copy contents of file without formatting to the (top-level) diversion.
.cflags n c1 c2 ...
Assign properties encoded by n to characters c1, c2, and so on.
.ch name Unplant page location trap name.
.ch name vpos
Change page location trap name planted by .wh by moving its location to vpos
(default scaling unit v).
.char c contents
Define ordinary or special character c as contents.
.chop object
Remove the last character from the macro, string, or diversion named object.
.class name c1 c2 ...
Define a (character) class name comprising the characters or range expressions
c1, c2, and so on.
.close stream
Close the stream.
.color Enable output of color-related device-independent output commands.
.color n If n is zero, disable output of color-related device-independent output
commands; otherwise, enable them.
.composite from to
Map glyph name from to glyph name to while constructing a composite glyph name.
.continue Finish the current iteration of a while loop.
.cp Enable compatibility mode.
.cp n If n is zero, disable compatibility mode, otherwise enable it.
.cs font n m
Set constant character width mode for font to n/36 ems with em m.
.cu Continuously underline the output of the next productive input line.
.cu npl Continuously underline the output of the next npl productive input lines. If
npl=0, stop continuously underlining.
.da Stop appending output to current diversion.
.da name Append output to diversion name.
.de macro Define or redefine macro until “..” occurs at the start of a control line in the
current conditional block.
.de macro end
Define or redefine macro until end is invoked or called at the start of a
control line in the current conditional block.
.de1 macro
As .de, but disable compatibility mode during macro expansion.
.de1 macro end
As “.de macro end”, but disable compatibility mode during macro expansion.
.defcolor ident scheme color-component ...
Define a color named ident. scheme identifies a color space and determines the
number of required color-components; it must be one of “rgb” (three components),
“cmy” (three), “cmyk” (four), or “gray” (one). “grey” is accepted as a synonym
of “gray”. The color components can be encoded as a single hexadecimal value
starting with # or ##. The former indicates that each component is in the range
0–255 (0–FF), the latter the range 0–65,535 (0–FFFF). Alternatively, each color
component can be specified as a decimal fraction in the range 0–1, interpreted
using a default scaling unit of “f”, which multiplies its value by 65,536 (but
clamps it at 65,535). Each output device has a color named “default”, which
cannot be redefined. A device's default stroke and fill colors are not
necessarily the same.
.dei macro
Define macro indirectly. As .de, but use interpolation of string macro as the
name of the defined macro.
.dei macro end
Define macro indirectly. As .de, but use interpolations of strings macro and
end as the names of the defined and end macros.
.dei1 macro
As .dei, but disable compatibility mode during macro expansion.
.dei1 macro end
As .dei macro end, but disable compatibility mode during macro expansion.
.device anything
Write anything, read in copy mode, to troff output as a device control command.
An initial neutral double quote is stripped to allow embedding of leading
spaces.
.devicem name
Write contents of macro or string name to troff output as a device control
command.
.di Stop directing output to current diversion.
.di name Direct output to diversion name.
.do name ...
Interpret the string, request, diversion, or macro name (along with any
arguments) with compatibility mode disabled. Compatibility mode is restored
(only if it was active) when the expansion of name is interpreted.
.ds name Create empty string name.
.ds name contents
Create a string name containing contents.
.ds1 name
.ds1 name contents
As .ds, but with compatibility mode disabled when contents interpolated.
.dt Clear diversion trap.
.dt vertical-position name
Set the diversion trap to macro name at vertical-position (default scaling
unit v).
.ec Recognize \ as the escape character.
.ec o Recognize ordinary character o as the escape character.
.ecr Restore escape character saved with .ecs.
.ecs Save the escape character.
.el anything
Interpret anything as if it were an input line if the conditional expression of
the corresponding .ie request was false.
.em name Call macro name after the end of input.
.eo Disable the escape mechanism in interpretation mode.
.ev Pop environment stack, returning to previous one.
.ev env Push current environment onto stack and switch to env.
.evc env Copy environment env to the current one.
.ex Exit with successful status.
.fam Set default font family to previous value.
.fam name Set default font family to name.
.fc Disable field mechanism.
.fc a Set field delimiter to a and pad glyph to space.
.fc a b Set field delimiter to a and pad glyph to b.
.fchar c contents
Define fallback character (or glyph) c as contents.
.fcolor Restore previous fill color.
.fcolor c Set fill color to c.
.fi Enable filling of output lines; a pending output line is broken. Sets \n[.u].
.fl Flush output buffer.
.fp pos id
Mount font with font description file name id at non-negative position n.
.fp pos id font-description-file-name
Mount font with font-description-file-name as name id at non-negative
position n.
.fschar f c anything
Define fallback character (or glyph) c for font f as string anything.
.fspecial font
Reset list of special fonts for font to be empty.
.fspecial font s1 s2 ...
When the current font is font, then the fonts s1, s2, ... are special.
.ft
.ft P Select previous font mounting position (abstract style or font); same as \f[] or
\fP.
.ft font Select typeface font, which can be a mounting position, abstract style, or font
name; same as \f[font] escape sequence. font cannot be P.
.ftr font1 font2
Translate font1 to font2.
.fzoom font
.fzoom font 0
Stop magnifying font.
.fzoom font z
Set zoom factor for font to z (in thousandths; default: 1000).
.gcolor Restore previous stroke color.
.gcolor c Set stroke color to c.
.hc Reset the hyphenation character to \% (the default).
.hc char Change the hyphenation character to char.
.hcode c1 code1 [c2 code2] ...
Set the hyphenation code of character c1 to code1, that of c2 to code2, and so
on.
.hla lang Set the hyphenation language to lang.
.hlm n Set the maximum quantity of consecutive hyphenated lines to n.
.hpf pattern-file
Read hyphenation patterns from pattern-file.
.hpfa pattern-file
Append hyphenation patterns from pattern-file.
.hpfcode a b [c d] ...
Define mappings for character codes in hyphenation pattern files read with .hpf
and .hpfa.
.hw word ...
Define hyphenation overrides for each word; a hyphen “-” indicates a hyphenation
point.
.hy Set automatic hyphenation mode to 1.
.hy 0 Disable automatic hyphenation; same as .nh.
.hy mode Set automatic hyphenation mode to mode; see section “Hyphenation” below.
.hym Set the (right) hyphenation margin to 0 (the default).
.hym length
Set the (right) hyphenation margin to length (default scaling unit m).
.hys Set the hyphenation space to 0 (the default).
.hys hyphenation-space
Suppress automatic hyphenation in adjustment modes “b” or “n” if the line can be
justified with the addition of up to hyphenation-space to each inter-word space
(default scaling unit m).
.ie cond-expr anything
If cond-expr is true, interpret anything as if it were an input line, otherwise
skip to a corresponding .el request.
.if cond-expr anything
If cond-expr is true, then interpret anything as if it were an input line.
.ig Ignore input (except for side effects of \R on auto-incrementing registers)
until “..” occurs at the start of a control line in the current conditional
block.
.ig end Ignore input (except for side effects of \R on auto-incrementing registers)
until .end is called at the start of a control line in the current conditional
block.
.in Set indentation amount to previous value.
.in ±N Set indentation to ±N (default scaling unit m).
.it Cancel any pending input line trap.
.it npl name
Set (or replace) an input line trap in the environment, calling macro name,
after the next npl productive input lines have been read. Lines interrupted
with the \c escape sequence are counted separately.
.itc Cancel any pending input line trap.
.itc npl name
As .it, except that input lines interrupted with the \c escape sequence are not
counted.
.kern Enable pairwise kerning.
.kern n If n is zero, disable pairwise kerning, otherwise enable it.
.lc Unset leader repetition character.
.lc c Set leader repetition character to c (default: “.”).
.length reg anything
Compute the number of characters of anything and store the count in the register
reg.
.linetabs Enable line-tabs mode (calculate tab positions relative to beginning of output
line).
.linetabs 0
Disable line-tabs mode.
.lf n Set number of next input line to n.
.lf n file
Set number of next input line to n and input file name to file.
.lg m Set ligature mode to m (0 = disable, 1 = enable, 2 = enable for two-letter
ligatures only).
.ll Set line length to previous value. Does not affect a pending output line.
.ll ±N Set line length to ±N (default length 6.5i, default scaling unit m). Does not
affect a pending output line.
.lsm Unset the leading space macro (trap). Restore default handling of lines with
leading spaces.
.lsm name Set the leading space macro (trap) to name.
.ls Change to the previous value of additional intra-line skip.
.ls n Set additional intra-line skip value to n, i.e., n-1 blank lines are inserted
after each text output line.
.lt Set length of title lines to previous value.
.lt ±N Set length of title lines (default length 6.5i, default scaling unit m).
.mc Cease writing margin character.
.mc c Begin writing margin character c to the right of each output line.
.mc c d Begin writing margin character c on each output line at distance d to the right
of the right margin (default distance 10p, default scaling unit m).
.mk Mark vertical drawing position in an internal register; see .rt.
.mk register
Mark vertical drawing position in register.
.mso file As .so, except that file is sought in the tmac directories.
.msoquiet file
As .mso, but no warning is emitted if file does not exist.
.na Disable output line adjustment.
.ne Break page if distance to next page location trap is less than one vee.
.ne d Break page if distance to next page location trap is less than distance d
(default scaling unit v).
.nf Disable filling of output lines; a pending output line is broken. Clears
\n[.u].
.nh Disable automatic hyphenation; same as “.hy 0”.
.nm Deactivate output line numbering.
.nm ±N
.nm ±N m
.nm ±N m s
.nm ±N m s i
Activate output line numbering: number the next output line ±N, writing numbers
every m lines, with s numeral widths (\0) between the line number and the output
(default 1), and indenting the line number by i numeral widths (default 0).
.nn Suppress numbering of the next output line to be numbered with nm.
.nn n Suppress numbering of the next n output lines to be numbered with nm. If n=0,
cancel suppression.
.nop anything
Interpret anything as if it were an input line.
.nr reg ±N
Define or update register reg with value N.
.nr reg ±N I
Define or update register reg with value N and auto-increment I.
.nroff Make the conditional expressions n true and t false.
.ns Enable no-space mode, ignoring .sp requests until a glyph or \D primitive is
output. See .rs.
.nx Immediately jump to end of current file.
.nx file Stop formatting current file and begin reading file.
.open stream file
Open file for writing and associate the stream named stream with it. Unsafe
request; disabled by default.
.opena stream file
As .open, but append to file. Unsafe request; disabled by default.
.os Output vertical distance that was saved by the .sv request.
.output contents
Emit contents directly to intermediate output, allowing leading whitespace if
string starts with " (which is stripped off).
.pc Reset page number character to ‘%’.
.pc c Page number character.
.pev Report the state of the current environment followed by that of all other
environments to the standard error stream.
.pi program
Pipe output to program (nroff only). Unsafe request; disabled by default.
.pl Set page length to default 11i. The current page length is stored in register
.p.
.pl ±N Change page length to ±N (default scaling unit v).
.pm Report, to the standard error stream, the names and sizes in bytes of defined
macros, strings, and diversions.
.pn ±N Next page number N.
.pnr Write the names and contents of all defined registers to the standard error
stream.
.po Change to previous page offset. The current page offset is available in
register .o.
.po ±N Page offset N.
.ps Return to previous type size.
.ps ±N Set/increase/decrease the type size to/by N scaled points (a non-positive
resulting type size is set to 1 u); also see \s[±N].
.psbb file
Retrieve the bounding box of the PostScript image found in file, which must
conform to Adobe's Document Structuring Conventions (DSC). See registers llx,
lly, urx, ury.
.pso command-line
Execute command-line with popen(3) and interpolate its output. Unsafe request;
disabled by default.
.ptr Report names and positions of all page location traps to the standard error
stream.
.pvs Change to previous post-vertical line spacing.
.pvs ±N Change post-vertical line spacing according to ±N (default scaling unit p).
.rchar c1 c2 ...
Remove definition of each ordinary or special character c1, c2, ... defined by a
.char, .fchar, or .schar request.
.rd prompt
Read insertion.
.return Return from a macro.
.return anything
Return twice, namely from the macro at the current level and from the macro one
level higher.
.rfschar f c1 c2 ...
Remove the font-specific definitions of glyphs c1, c2, ... for font f.
.rj npl Break, right-align the output of the next productive input line without filling,
then break again.
.rj npl Break, right-align the output of the next npl productive input lines without
filling, then break again. If npl ≤ 0, stop right-aligning.
.rm name Remove request, macro, diversion, or string name.
.rn old new
Rename request, macro, diversion, or string old to new.
.rnn reg1 reg2
Rename register reg1 to reg2.
.rr ident Remove register ident.
.rs Restore spacing; disable no-space mode. See .ns.
.rt Return (upward only) to vertical position marked by .mk on the current page.
.rt N Return (upward only) to vertical position N (default scaling unit v).
.schar c contents
Define global fallback character (or glyph) c as contents.
.shc Reset the soft hyphen character to \[hy].
.shc c Set the soft hyphen character to c.
.shift n In a macro definition, left-shift arguments by n positions.
.sizes s1 s2 ... sn [0]
Set available type sizes similarly to the sizes directive in a DESC file. Each
si is interpreted in units of scaled points (z).
.so file Replace the request's control line with the contents of file, “sourcing” it.
.soquiet file
As .so, but no warning is emitted if file does not exist.
.sp Break and move the next text baseline down by one vee, or until springing a page
location trap.
.sp dist Break and move the next text baseline down by dist, or until springing a page
location trap (default scaling unit v). A negative dist will not reduce the
position of the text baseline below zero. Prefixing dist with the | operator
moves to a position relative to the page top for positive N, and the bottom if N
is negative; in all cases, one line height (vee) is added to dist. dist is
ignored inside a diversion.
.special Reset global list of special fonts to be empty.
.special s1 s2 ...
Fonts s1, s2, etc. are special and are searched for glyphs not in the current
font.
.spreadwarn
Toggle the spread warning on and off (the default) without changing its value.
.spreadwarn N
Emit a break warning if the additional space inserted for each space between
words in an adjusted output line is greater than or equal to N. A negative N is
treated as 0. The default scaling unit is m. At startup, .spreadwarn is
inactive and N is 3 m.
.ss n Set minimal inter-word spacing to n 12ths of current font's space width.
.ss n m As “.ss n”, and set additional inter-sentence space to m 12ths of current font's
space width.
.stringdown stringvar
Replace each byte in the string named stringvar with its lowercase version.
.stringup stringvar
Replace each byte in the string named stringvar with its uppercase version.
.sty n style
Associate abstract style with font position n.
.substring str start [end]
Replace the string named str with its substring bounded by the indices start and
end, inclusive. Negative indices count backwards from the end of the string.
.sv As .ne, but save 1 v for output with .os request.
.sv d As .ne, but save distance d for later output with .os request (default scaling
unit v).
.sy command-line
Execute command-line with system(3). Unsafe request; disabled by default.
.ta n1 n2 ... nn T r1 r2 ... rn
Set tabs at positions n1, n2, ..., nn, then set tabs at nn+m×rn+r1 through
nn+m×rn+rn, where m increments from 0, 1, 2, ... to the output line length.
Each n argument can be prefixed with a “+” to place the tab stop ni at a
distance relative to the previous, n(i-1). Each argument ni or ri can be
suffixed with a letter to align text within the tab column bounded by tab stops
i and i+1; “L” for left-aligned (the default), “C” for centered, and “R” for
right-aligned.
.tag
.taga Reserved for internal use.
.tc Unset tab repetition character.
.tc c Set tab repetition character to c (default: none).
.ti ±N Temporarily indent next output line (default scaling unit m).
.tkf font s1 n1 s2 n2
Enable track kerning for font.
.tl 'left'center'right'
Format three-part title.
.tm message
Write message, followed by a newline, to the standard error stream.
.tm1 message
As .tm, but an initial neutral double quote in message is removed, allowing it
to contain leading spaces.
.tmc message
As .tm1, without emitting a newline.
.tr abcd...
Translate ordinary or special characters a to b, c to d, and so on prior to
output.
.trf file Transparently output the contents of file. Unlike .cf, invalid input characters
in file are rejected.
.trin abcd...
As .tr, except that .asciify ignores the translation when a diversion is
interpolated.
.trnt abcd...
As .tr, except that translations are suppressed in the argument to \!.
.troff Make the conditional expressions t true and n false.
.uf font Set underline font used by .ul to font.
.ul Underline (italicize in troff mode) the output of the next productive input
line.
.ul npl Underline (italicize in troff mode) the output of the next npl productive input
line. If npl=0, stop underlining.
.unformat diversion
Unformat space characters and tabs in diversion, preserving font information.
.vpt Enable vertical position traps.
.vpt 0 Disable vertical position traps.
.vs Change to previous vertical spacing.
.vs ±N Set vertical spacing to ±N (default scaling unit p).
.warn Enable all warning categories.
.warn 0 Disable all warning categories.
.warn n Enable warnings in categories whose codes sum to n; see troff(1).
.warnscale su
Set scaling unit used in certain warnings to su (one of u, i, c, p, or P;
default: i).
.wh vpos Remove visible page location trap at vpos (default scaling unit v).
.wh vpos name
Plant macro name as page location trap at vpos (default scaling unit v),
removing any visible trap already there.
.while cond-expr anything
Repeatedly execute anything unless and until cond-expr evaluates false.
.write stream anything
Write anything to the stream named stream.
.writec stream anything
Similar to .write without emitting a final newline.
.writem stream xx
Write contents of macro or string xx to the stream named stream.
Escape sequence short reference
The escape sequences \", \#, \$, \*, \?, \a, \e, \n, \t, \g, \V, and \newline are
interpreted even in copy mode.
\" Comment. Everything up to the end of the line is ignored.
\# Comment. Everything up to and including the next newline is ignored.
\*s Interpolate string with one-character name s.
\*(st Interpolate string with two-character name st.
\*[string]
Interpolate string with name string (of arbitrary length).
\*[string arg ...]
Interpolate string with name string (of arbitrary length), taking arg ... as
arguments.
\$0 Interpolate name by which currently executing macro was invoked.
\$n Interpolate macro or string parameter numbered n (1≤n≤9).
\$(nn Interpolate macro or string parameter numbered nn (01≤nn≤99).
\$[nnn]
Interpolate macro or string parameter numbered nnn (nnn≥1).
\$* Interpolate concatenation of all macro or string parameters, separated by spaces.
\$@ Interpolate concatenation of all macro or string parameters, with each surrounded
by double quotes and separated by spaces.
\$^ Interpolate concatenation of all macro or string parameters as if they were
arguments to the .ds request.
\' is a synonym for \[aa], the acute accent special character.
\` is a synonym for \[ga], the grave accent special character.
\- is a synonym for \[-], the minus sign special character.
\_ is a synonym for \[ul], the underrule special character.
\% Control hyphenation.
\! Transparent line. The remainder of the input line is interpreted (1) when the
current diversion is read; or (2) if in the top-level diversion, by the
postprocessor (if any).
\?anything\?
Transparently embed anything, read in copy mode, in a diversion, or unformatted as
an output comparand in a conditional expression.
\space Move right one word space.
\~ Insert an unbreakable, adjustable space.
\0 Move right by the width of a numeral in the current font.
\| Move one-sixth em to the right on typesetters.
\^ Move one-twelfth em to the right on typesetters.
\& Interpolate a dummy character.
\) Interpolate a dummy character that is transparent to end-of-sentence recognition.
\/ Apply italic correction. Use between an immediately adjacent oblique glyph on the
left and an upright glyph on the right.
\, Apply left italic correction. Use between an immediately adjacent upright glyph on
the left and an oblique glyph on the right.
\: Non-printing break point (similar to \%, but never produces a hyphen glyph).
\newline
Continue current input line on the next.
\{ Begin conditional input.
\} End conditional input.
\(gl Interpolate glyph with two-character name gl.
\[glyph]
Interpolate glyph with name glyph (of arbitrary length).
\[base-char comp ...]
Interpolate composite glyph constructed from base-char and each component comp.
\[charnnn]
Interpolate glyph of eight-bit encoded character nnn, where 0≤nnn≤255.
\[unnnn[n[n]]]
Interpolate glyph of Unicode character with code point nnnn[n[n]] in uppercase
hexadecimal.
\[ubase-char[_combining-component]...]
Interpolate composite glyph from Unicode character base-char and combining-
components.
\a Interpolate a leader in copy mode.
\A'anything'
Interpolate 1 if anything is a valid identifier, and 0 otherwise.
\b'string'
Build bracket: pile a sequence of glyphs corresponding to each character in string
vertically, and center it vertically on the output line.
\B'anything'
Interpolate 1 if anything is a valid numeric expression, and 0 otherwise.
\c Continue output line at next input line.
\C'glyph'
As \[glyph], but compatible with other troff implementations.
\d Move downward ½ em on typesetters.
\D'drawing-command'
See subsection “Drawing commands” below.
\e Interpolate the escape character.
\E As \e, but not interpreted in copy mode.
\fP Select previous font mounting position (abstract style or font); same as “.ft” or
“.ft P”.
\fF Select font mounting position, abstract style, or font with one-character name or
one-digit position F. F cannot be P.
\f(ft Select font mounting position, abstract style, or font with two-character name or
two-digit position ft.
\f[font]
Select font mounting position, abstract style, or font with arbitrarily long name
or position font. font cannot be P.
\f[] Select previous font mounting position (abstract style or font).
\Ff Set default font family to that with one-character name f.
\F(fm Set default font family to that with two-character name fm.
\F[fam]
Set default font family to that with arbitrarily long name fam.
\F[] Set default font family to previous value.
\gr Interpolate format of register with one-character name r.
\g(rg Interpolate format of register with two-character name rg.
\g[reg]
Interpolate format of register with arbitrarily long name reg.
\h'N' Horizontally move the drawing position by N ems (or specified units); | may be
used. Positive motion is rightward.
\H'N' Set height of current font to N scaled points (or specified units).
\kr Mark horizontal position in one-character register name r.
\k(rg Mark horizontal position in two-character register name rg.
\k[reg]
Mark horizontal position in register with arbitrarily long name reg.
\l'N[c]'
Draw horizontal line of length N with character c (default: \[ru]; default scaling
unit m).
\L'N[c]'
Draw vertical line of length N with character c (default: \[br]; default scaling
unit v).
\mc Set stroke color to that with one-character name c.
\m(cl Set stroke color to that with two-character name cl.
\m[color]
Set stroke color to that with arbitrarily long name color.
\m[] Restore previous stroke color.
\Mc Set fill color to that with one-character name c.
\M(cl Set fill color to that with two-character name cl.
\M[color]
Set fill color to that with arbitrarily long name color.
\M[] Restore previous fill color.
\nr Interpolate contents of register with one-character name r.
\n(rg Interpolate contents of register with two-character name rg.
\n[reg]
Interpolate contents of register with arbitrarily long name reg.
\N'n' Interpolate glyph with index n in the current font.
\o'abc...'
Overstrike centered glyphs of characters a, b, c, and so on.
\O0 At the outermost suppression level, disable emission of glyphs and geometric
objects to the output driver.
\O1 At the outermost suppression level, enable emission of glyphs and geometric objects
to the output driver.
\O2 At the outermost suppression level, enable glyph and geometric primitive emission
to the output driver and write to the standard error stream the page number, four
bounding box registers enclosing glyphs written since the previous \O escape
sequence, the page offset, line length, image file name (if any), horizontal and
vertical device motion quanta, and input file name.
\O3 Begin a nested suppression level.
\O4 End a nested suppression level.
\O[5Pfile]
At the outermost suppression level, write the name file to the standard error
stream at position P, which must be one of l, r, c, or i.
\p Break output line at next word boundary; adjust if applicable.
\r Move “in reverse” (upward) 1 em.
\R'name ±N'
Set, increment, or decrement register name by N.
\s±N Set/increase/decrease the type size to/by N scaled points. N must be a single
digit; 0 restores the previous type size. (In compatibility mode only, a non-zero
N must be in the range 4–39.) Otherwise, as .ps request.
\s(±N
\s±(N Set/increase/decrease the type size to/by N scaled points; N is a two-digit number
≥1. As .ps request.
\s[±N]
\s±[N]
\s'±N'
\s±'N' Set/increase/decrease the type size to/by N scaled points. As .ps request.
\S'N' Slant output glyphs by N degrees; the direction of text flow is positive.
\t Interpolate a tab in copy mode.
\u Move upward ½ em on typesetters.
\v'N' Vertically move the drawing position by N vees (or specified units); | may be used.
Positive motion is downward.
\Ve Interpolate contents of environment variable with one-character name e.
\V(ev Interpolate contents of environment variable with two-character name ev.
\V[env]
Interpolate contents of environment variable with arbitrarily long name env.
\w'anything'
Interpolate width of anything, formatted in a dummy environment.
\x'N' Increase vertical spacing of pending output line by N vees (or specified units;
negative before, positive after).
\X'anything'
Write anything to troff output as a device control command. Within anything, the
escape sequences \&, \), \%, and \: are ignored; \space and \~ are converted to
single space characters; and \\ has its escape character stripped. So that the
basic Latin subset of the Unicode character set can be reliably encoded in
anything, the special character escape sequences \-, \[aq], \[dq], \[ga], \[ha],
\[rs], and \[ti] are mapped to basic Latin characters; see groff_char(7). For this
transformation, character translations and special character definitions are
ignored.
\Yn Write contents of macro or string n to troff output as a device control command.
\Y(nm Write contents of macro or string nm to troff output as a device control command.
\Y[name]
Write contents of macro or string name to troff output as a device control command.
\zc Format character c with zero width—without advancing the drawing position.
\Z'anything'
Save the drawing position, format anything, then restore it.
Drawing commands
Drawing commands direct the output device to render geometrical objects rather than
glyphs. Specific devices may support only a subset, or may feature additional ones;
consult the man page for the output driver in use. Terminal devices in particular
implement almost none.
Rendering starts at the drawing position; when finished, the drawing position is left at
the rightmost point of the object, even for closed figures, except where noted. GNU troff
draws stroked (outlined) objects with the stroke color, and shades filled ones with the
fill color. See section “Colors” above. Coordinates h and v are horizontal and vertical
motions relative to the drawing position or previous point in the command. The default
scaling unit for horizontal measurements (and diameters of circles) is m; for vertical
ones, v.
Circles, ellipses, and polygons can be drawn stroked or filled. These are independent
properties; if you want a filled, stroked figure, you must draw the same figure twice
using each drawing command. A filled figure is always smaller than an outlined one
because the former is drawn only within its defined area, whereas strokes have a line
thickness (set with \D't').
\D'~ h1 v1 ... hn vn'
Draw B-spline to each point in sequence, leaving drawing position at (hn, vn).
\D'a hc vc h v'
Draw circular arc centered at (hc, vc) counterclockwise from the drawing position
to a point (h, v) relative to the center. (hc, vc) is adjusted to the point
nearest the perpendicular bisector of the arc's chord.
\D'c d'
Draw circle of diameter d with its leftmost point at the drawing position.
\D'C d'
As \D'C', but the circle is filled.
\D'e h v'
Draw ellipse of width h and height v with its leftmost point at the drawing
position.
\D'E h v'
As \D'e', but the ellipse is filled.
\D'l h v'
Draw line from the drawing position to (h, v).
\D'p h1 v1 ... hn vn'
Draw polygon with vertices at drawing position and each point in sequence. GNU
troff closes the polygon by drawing a line from (hn, vn) back to the initial
drawing position. Afterward, the drawing position is left at (hn, vn).
\D'P h1 v1 ... hn vn'
As \D'p', but the polygon is filled.
\D't n'
Set stroke thickness of geometric objects to to n basic units. A zero n selects
the minimal supported thickness. A negative n selects a thickness proportional to
the type size; this is the default.
Device control commands
The .device and .devicem requests, and \X and \Y escape sequences, enable documents to
pass information directly to a postprocessor. These are useful for exercising device-
specific capabilities that the groff language does not abstract or generalize; such
functions include the embedding of hyperlinks and image files. Device-specific functions
are documented in each output driver's man page.
Strings
groff supports strings primarily for user convenience. Conventionally, if one would
define a macro only to interpolate a small amount of text, without invoking requests or
calling any other macros, one defines a string instead. Only one string is predefined by
the language.
\*[.T] Contains the name of the output device (for example, “utf8” or “pdf”).
The .ds request creates a string with a specified name and contents. If the identifier
named by .ds already exists as an alias, the target of the alias is redefined. If .ds is
called with only one argument, the named string becomes empty. Otherwise, troff stores
the remainder of the control line in copy mode; see subsection “Copy mode” below.
The \* escape sequence dereferences a string's name, interpolating its contents. If the
name does not exist, it is defined as empty, nothing is interpolated, and a warning in
category “mac” is emitted. See section “Warnings” in troff(1). The bracketed
interpolation form accepts arguments that are handled as macro arguments are; see section
“Calling macros” above. In contrast to macro calls, however, if a closing bracket ]
occurs in a string argument, that argument must be enclosed in double quotes. \* is
interpreted even in copy mode. When defining strings, argument interpolations must be
escaped if they are to reference parameters from the calling context; see section
“Parameters” below.
An initial neutral double quote " in the string contents is stripped to allow embedding of
leading spaces. Any other " is interpreted literally, but it is wise to use the special
character escape sequence \[dq] instead if the string might be interpolated as part of a
macro argument; see section “Calling macros” above. Strings are not limited to a single
input line of text. \newline works just as it does elsewhere. The resulting string is
stored without the newlines. Care is therefore required when interpolating strings while
filling is disabled. It is not possible to embed a newline in a string that will be
interpreted as such when the string is interpolated. To achieve that effect, use \* to
interpolate a macro instead.
The .as request is similar to .ds but appends to a string instead of redefining it. If
.as is called with only one argument, no operation is performed (beyond dereferencing the
string).
Because strings are similar to macros, they too can be defined to suppress AT&T troff
compatibility mode enablement when interpolated; see section “Compatibility mode” below.
The .ds1 request defines a string that suspends compatibility mode when the string is
later interpolated. .as1 is likewise similar to .as, with compatibility mode suspended
when the appended portion of the string is later interpolated.
Caution: Unlike other requests, the second argument to these requests consumes the
remainder of the input line, including trailing spaces. Ending string definitions (and
appendments) with a comment, even an empty one, prevents unwanted space from creeping into
them during source document maintenance.
Several requests exist to perform rudimentary string operations. Strings can be queried
(.length) and modified (.chop, .substring, .stringup, .stringdown), and their names can be
manipulated through renaming, removal, and aliasing (.rn, .rm, .als).
When a request, macro, string, or diversion is aliased, redefinitions and appendments
“write through” alias names. To replace an alias with a separately defined object, you
must use the rm request on its name first.
Registers
In the roff language, numbers can be stored in registers. Many built-in registers exist,
supplying anything from the date to details of formatting parameters. You can also define
your own. See section “Identifiers” above for information on constructing a valid name
for a register.
Define registers and update their values with the nr request or the \R escape sequence.
Registers can also be incremented or decremented by a configured amount at the time they
are interpolated. The value of the increment is specified with a third argument to the
.nr request, and a special interpolation syntax, \n± is used to alter and then retrieve
the register's value. Together, these features are called auto-increment. (A negative
auto-increment can be considered an “auto-decrement”.)
Many predefined registers are available. In the following presentation, the register
interpolation syntax \n[name] is used to refer to a register name to clearly distinguish
it from a string or request name. The register name space is separate from that used for
requests, macros, strings, and diversions. Bear in mind that the symbols \n[] are not
part of the register name.
Read-only registers
Predefined registers whose identifiers start with a dot are read-only. Many are Boolean-
valued. Some are string-valued, meaning that they interpolate text. A register name
(without the dot) is often associated with a request of the same name; exceptions are
noted.
\n[.$] Count of arguments passed to currently interpolated macro or string.
\n[.a] Amount of extra post-vertical line space; see \x.
\n[.A] Approximate output is being formatted (Boolean-valued); see troff -a
option.
\n[.b] Font emboldening offset; see .bd.
\n[.br] The normal control character was used to call the currently interpolated
macro (Boolean-valued).
\n[.c] Input line number; see .lf and register “c.”.
\n[.C] Compatibility mode is enabled (Boolean-valued); see .cp. Always false when
processing .do; see register .cp.
\n[.cdp] Depth of last glyph formatted in the environment; positive if glyph extends
below the baseline.
\n[.ce] Count of output lines remaining to be centered.
\n[.cht] Height of last glyph formatted in the environment; positive if glyph
extends above the baseline.
\n[.color] Color output is enabled (Boolean-valued).
\n[.cp] Within .do, the saved value of compatibility mode; see register .C.
\n[.csk] Skew of the last glyph formatted in the environment; skew is how far to the
right of the center of a glyph the center of an accent over that glyph
should be placed.
\n[.d] Vertical drawing position in diversion.
\n[.ev] Name of environment (string-valued).
\n[.f] Mounting position of selected font; see .ft and \f.
\n[.F] Name of input file (string-valued); see .lf.
\n[.fam] Name of default font family (string-valued).
\n[.fn] Resolved name of selected font (string-valued); see .ft and \f.
\n[.fp] Next non-zero free font mounting position index.
\n[.g] Always true in GNU troff (Boolean-valued).
\n[.h] Text baseline high-water mark on page or in diversion.
\n[.H] Horizontal motion quantum of output device in basic units.
\n[.height] Font height; see \H.
\n[.hla] Hyphenation language in environment (string-valued).
\n[.hlc] Count of immediately preceding consecutive hyphenated lines in environment.
\n[.hlm] Maximum quantity of consecutive hyphenated lines allowed in environment.
\n[.hy] Automatic hyphenation mode in environment.
\n[.hym] Hyphenation margin in environment.
\n[.hys] Hyphenation space adjustment threshold in environment.
\n[.i] Indentation amount; see .in.
\n[.in] Indentation amount applicable to the pending output line; see .ti.
\n[.int] Previous output line was “interrupted” or continued with \c (Boolean-
valued).
\n[.j] Adjustment mode encoded as an integer; see .ad and .na. Do not interpret
or perform arithmetic on its value.
\n[.k] Horizontal drawing position relative to indentation.
\n[.kern] Pairwise kerning is enabled (Boolean-valued).
\n[.l] Line length; see .ll.
\n[.L] Line spacing; see .ls.
\n[.lg] Ligature mode.
\n[.linetabs] Line-tabs mode is enabled (Boolean-valued).
\n[.ll] Line length applicable to the pending output line.
\n[.lt] Title length.
\n[.m] Stroke color (string-valued); see .gcolor and \m. Empty if the stroke
color is the default.
\n[.M] Fill color (string-valued); see .fcolor and \M. Empty if the fill color is
the default.
\n[.n] Length of formatted output on previous output line.
\n[.ne] Amount of vertical space required by last .ne that caused a trap to be
sprung; also see register .trunc.
\n[.nm] Output line numbering is enabled (Boolean-valued).
\n[.nn] Count of output lines remaining to have numbering suppressed.
\n[.ns] No-space mode is enabled (Boolean-valued).
\n[.o] Page offset; see .po.
\n[.O] Output suppression nesting level; see \O.
\n[.p] Page length; see .pl.
\n[.P] The page is selected for output (Boolean-valued); see troff -o option.
\n[.pe] Page ejection is in progress (Boolean-valued).
\n[.pn] Number of the next page.
\n[.ps] Type size in scaled points.
\n[.psr] Most recently requested type size in scaled points; see .ps and \s.
\n[.pvs] Post-vertical line spacing.
\n[.R] Count of available unused registers; always 10,000 in GNU troff.
\n[.rj] Count of lines remaining to be right-aligned.
\n[.s] Type size in points as a decimal fraction (string-valued); see .ps and \s.
\n[.slant] Slant of font in degrees; see \S.
\n[.sr] Most recently requested type size in points as a decimal fraction (string-
valued); see .ps and \s.
\n[.ss] Size of minimal inter-word space in twelfths of the space width of the
selected font.
\n[.sss] Size of additional inter-sentence space in twelfths of the space width of
the selected font.
\n[.sty] Selected abstract style (string-valued); see .ft and \f.
\n[.t] Distance to next vertical position trap; see .wh and .ch.
\n[.T] An output device was explicitly selected (Boolean-valued); see troff -T
option.
\n[.tabs] Representation of tab settings suitable for use as argument to .ta (string-
valued).
\n[.trunc] Amount of vertical space truncated by the most recently sprung vertical
position trap, or, if the trap was sprung by an .ne, minus the amount of
vertical motion produced by .ne; also see register .ne.
\n[.u] Filling is enabled (Boolean-valued); see .fi and .nf.
\n[.U] Unsafe mode is enabled (Boolean-valued); see troff -U option.
\n[.v] Vertical line spacing; see .vs.
\n[.V] Vertical motion quantum of the output device in basic units.
\n[.vpt] Vertical position traps are enabled (Boolean-valued).
\n[.w] Width of previous glyph formatted in the environment.
\n[.warn] Sum of the numeric codes of enabled warning categories.
\n[.x] Major version number of the running troff formatter.
\n[.y] Minor version number of the running troff formatter.
\n[.Y] Revision number of the running troff formatter.
\n[.z] Name of diversion (string-valued). Empty if output is directed to the top-
level diversion.
\n[.zoom] Zoom multiplier of current font (in thousandths; zero if no magnification);
see .fzoom.
Writable predefined registers
Several registers are predefined but also modifiable; some are updated upon interpretation
of certain requests or escape sequences. Date- and time-related registers are set to the
local time as determined by localtime(3) when the formatter launches. This initialization
can be overridden by SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH and TZ; see section “Environment” of groff(1).
\n[$$] Process ID of troff.
\n[%] Page number.
\n[c.] Input line number.
\n[ct] Union of character types of each glyph rendered into dummy environment by
\w.
\n[dl] Width of last closed diversion.
\n[dn] Height of last closed diversion.
\n[dw] Day of the week (1–7; 1 is Sunday).
\n[dy] Day of the month (1–31).
\n[hours] Count of hours elapsed since midnight (0–23).
\n[hp] Horizontal drawing position relative to start of input line.
\n[llx] Lower-left x coordinate (in PostScript units) of PostScript image; see
.psbb.
\n[lly] Lower-left y coordinate (in PostScript units) of PostScript image; see
.psbb.
\n[ln] Output line number; see .nm.
\n[lsn] Count of leading spaces on input line.
\n[lss] Amount of horizontal space corresponding to leading spaces on input line.
\n[minutes] Count of minutes elapsed in the hour (0–59).
\n[mo] Month of the year (1–12).
\n[nl] Vertical drawing position.
\n[opmaxx]
\n[opmaxy]
\n[opminx]
\n[opminy] These four registers mark the top left- and bottom right-hand corners of a
rectangle encompassing all formatted output on the page. They are reset to
-1 by \O0 or \O1.
\n[rsb] As register sb, adding maximum glyph height to measurement.
\n[rst] As register st, adding maximum glyph depth to measurement.
\n[sb] Maximum displacement of text baseline below its original position after
rendering into dummy environment by \w.
\n[seconds] Count of seconds elapsed in the minute (0–60).
\n[skw] Skew of last glyph rendered into dummy environment by \w.
\n[slimit] The maximum depth of troff's internal input stack. If ≤0, there is no
limit: recursion can continue until available memory is exhausted. The
default is 1,000.
\n[ssc] Subscript correction of last glyph rendered into dummy environment by \w.
\n[st] Maximum displacement of text baseline above its original position after
rendering into dummy environment by \w.
\n[systat] Return value of system() function; see .sy.
\n[urx] Upper-right x coordinate (in PostScript units) of PostScript image; see
.psbb.
\n[ury] Upper-right y coordinate (in PostScript units) of PostScript image; see
.psbb.
\n[year] Gregorian year.
\n[yr] Gregorian year minus 1900.
Using fonts
In digital typography, a font is a collection of characters in a specific typeface that a
device can render as glyphs at a desired size. (Terminals and some output devices have
fonts that render at only one or two sizes. As examples of the latter, take the groff lj4
device's Lineprinter, and lbp's Courier and Elite faces.) A roff formatter can change
typefaces at any point in the text. The basic faces are a set of styles combining upright
and slanted shapes with normal and heavy stroke weights: “R”, “I”, “B”, and “BI”—these
stand for roman, bold, italic, and bold-italic. For linguistic text, GNU troff groups
typefaces into families containing each of these styles. (Font designers prepare families
such that the styles share esthetic properties.) A text font is thus often a family
combined with a style, but it need not be: consider the ps and pdf devices' ZCMI (Zapf
Chancery Medium italic)—often, no other style of Zapf Chancery Medium is provided. On
typesetting devices, at least one special font is available, comprising unstyled glyphs
for mathematical operators and other purposes.
Like AT&T troff, GNU troff does not itself load or manipulate a digital font file; instead
it works with a font description file that characterizes it, including its glyph
repertoire and the metrics (dimensions) of each glyph. This information permits the
formatter to accurately place glyphs with respect to each other. Before using a font
description, the formatter associates it with a mounting position, a place in an ordered
list of available typefaces. So that a document need not be strongly coupled to a
specific font family, in GNU troff an output device can associate a style in the abstract
sense with a mounting position. Thus the default family can be combined with a style
dynamically, producing a resolved font name.
Fonts often have trademarked names, and even Free Software fonts can require renaming upon
modification. groff maintains a convention that a device's serif font family is given the
name T (“Times”), its sans-serif family H (“Helvetica”), and its monospaced family C
(“Courier”). Historical inertia has driven groff's font identifiers to short uppercase
abbreviations of font names, as with TR, TB, TI, TBI, and a special font S.
The default family used with abstract styles can be changed at any time; initially, it
is T. Typically, abstract styles are arranged in the first four mounting positions in the
order shown above. The default mounting position, and therefore style, is always 1 (R).
By issuing appropriate formatter instructions, you can override these defaults before your
document writes its first glyph.
Terminal output devices cannot change font families and lack special fonts. They support
style changes by overstriking, or by altering ISO 6429/ECMA-48 graphic renditions
(character cell attributes).
Hyphenation
When filling, groff hyphenates words as needed at user-specified and automatically
determined hyphenation points. Explicitly hyphenated words such as “mother-in-law” are
always eligible for breaking after each of their hyphens. The hyphenation character \%
and non-printing break point \: escape sequences may be used to control the hyphenation
and breaking of individual words. The .hw request sets user-defined hyphenation points
for specified words at any subsequent occurrence. Otherwise, groff determines hyphenation
points automatically by default.
Several requests influence automatic hyphenation. Because conventions vary, a variety of
hyphenation modes is available to the .hy request; these determine whether hyphenation
will apply to a word prior to breaking a line at the end of a page (more or less; see
below for details), and at which positions within that word automatically determined
hyphenation points are permissible. The default is “1” for historical reasons, but this
is not an appropriate value for the English hyphenation patterns used by groff;
localization macro files loaded by troffrc and macro packages often override it.
0 disables hyphenation.
1 enables hyphenation except after the first and before the last character of a word.
The remaining values “imply” 1; that is, they enable hyphenation under the same conditions
as “.hy 1”, and then apply or lift restrictions relative to that basis.
2 disables hyphenation of the last word on a page. (Hyphenation is prevented if the
next page location trap is closer to the vertical drawing position than the next
text baseline would be. See section “Traps” below.)
4 disables hyphenation before the last two characters of a word.
8 disables hyphenation after the first two characters of a word.
16 enables hyphenation before the last character of a word.
32 enables hyphenation after the first character of a word.
Apart from value 2, restrictions imposed by the hyphenation mode are not respected for
words whose hyphenations have been specified with the hyphenation character (“\%” by
default) or the .hw request.
Nonzero values are additive. For example, mode 12 causes groff to hyphenate neither the
last two nor the first two characters of a word. Some values cannot be used together
because they contradict; for instance, values 4 and 16, and values 8 and 32. As noted, it
is superfluous to add 1 to any non-zero even mode.
The places within a word that are eligible for hyphenation are determined by language-
specific data (.hla, .hpf, and .hpfa) and lettercase relationships (.hcode and .hpfcode).
Furthermore, hyphenation of a word might be suppressed due to a limit on consecutive
hyphenated lines (.hlm), a minimum line length threshold (.hym), or because the line can
instead be adjusted with additional inter-word space (.hys).
Localization
The set of hyphenation patterns is associated with the hyphenation language set by the
.hla request. The .hpf request is usually invoked by a localization file loaded by the
troffrc file. groff provides localization files for several languages; see groff_tmac(5).
Writing macros
The .de request defines a macro named for its argument. If that name already exists as an
alias, the target of the alias is redefined; see section “Strings” above. troff enters
“copy mode” (see below), storing subsequent input lines as the definition. If the
optional second argument is not specified, the definition ends with the control line “..”
(two dots). Alternatively, a second argument names a macro whose call syntax ends the
definition; this “end macro” is then called normally. Spaces or tabs are permitted after
the first control character in the line containing this ending token, but a tab
immediately after the token prevents its recognition as the end of a macro definition.
Macro definitions can be nested if they use distinct end macros or if their ending tokens
are sufficiently escaped. An end macro need not be defined until it is called. This fact
enables a nested macro definition to begin inside one macro and end inside another.
Variants of .de disable compatibility mode and/or indirect the names of the macros
specified for definition or termination: these are .de1, .dei, and .dei1. Append to macro
definitions with .am, .am1, .ami, and .ami1. The .als, .rm, and .rn requests create an
alias of, remove, and rename a macro, respectively. .return stops the execution of a
macro immediately, returning to the enclosing context.
Parameters
Macro call and string interpolation parameters can be accessed using escape sequences
starting with “\$”. The \n[.$] read-only register stores the count of parameters
available to a macro or string; its value can be changed by the .shift request, which
dequeues parameters from the current list. The \$0 escape sequence interpolates the name
by which a macro was called. Applying string interpolation to a macro does not change
this name.
Copy mode
When troff processes certain requests, most importantly those which define or append to a
macro or string, it does so in copy mode: it copies the characters of the definition into
a dedicated storage region, interpolating the escape sequences \n, \g, \$, \*, \V, and \?
normally; interpreting \newline immediately; discarding comments \" and \#; interpolating
the current leader, escape, or tab character with \a, \e, and \t, respectively; and
storing all other escape sequences in an encoded form. The complement of copy mode—a roff
formatter's behavior when not defining or appending to a macro, string, or diversion—where
all macros are interpolated, requests invoked, and valid escape sequences processed
immediately upon recognition, can be termed interpretation mode.
The escape character, \ by default, can escape itself. This enables you to control
whether a given \n, \g, \$, \*, \V, or \? escape sequence is interpreted at the time the
macro containing it is defined, or later when the macro is called.
You can think of \\ as a “delayed” backslash; it is the escape character followed by a
backslash from which the escape character has removed its special meaning. Consequently,
\\ is not an escape sequence in the usual sense. In any escape sequence \X that troff
does not recognize, the escape character is ignored and X is output. An unrecognized
escape sequence causes a warning in category “escape”, with two exceptions, \\ being one.
The other is \., which escapes the control character. It is used to permit nested macro
definitions to end without a named macro call to conclude them. Without a syntax for
escaping the control character, this would not be possible. roff documents should not use
the \\ or \. character sequences outside of copy mode; they serve only to obfuscate the
input. Use \e to represent the escape character, \[rs] to obtain a backslash glyph, and
\& before . and ' where troff expects them as control characters if you mean to use them
literally.
Macro definitions can be nested to arbitrary depth. In “\\”, each escape character is
interpreted twice—once in copy mode, when the macro is defined, and once in interpretation
mode, when the macro is called. This fact leads to exponential growth in the quantity of
escape characters required to delay interpolation of \n, \g, \$, \*, \V, and \? at each
nesting level. An alternative is to use \E, which represents an escape character that is
not interpreted in copy mode. Because \. is not a true escape sequence, we can't use \E
to keep “..” from ending a macro definition prematurely. If the multiplicity of
backslashes complicates maintenance, use end macros.
Traps
Traps are locations in the output, or conditions on the input that, when reached or
fulfilled, call a specified macro. A vertical position trap calls a macro when the
formatter's vertical drawing position reaches or passes, in the downward direction, a
certain location on the output page or in a diversion. Its applications include setting
page headers and footers, body text in multiple columns, and footnotes. These traps can
occur at a given location on the page (.wh, .ch); at a given location in the current
diversion (.dt)—together, these are known as vertical position traps, which can be
disabled and re-enabled (.vpt).
A diversion is not formatted in the context of a page, so it lacks page location traps;
instead it can have a diversion trap. There can exist at most one such vertical position
trap per diversion.
Other kinds of trap can be planted at a blank line (.blm); at a line with leading space
characters (.lsm); after a certain number of productive input lines (.it, .itc); or at the
end of input (.em). Macros called by traps are passed no arguments. Setting a trap is
also called planting one. It is said that a trap is sprung if its condition is fulfilled.
Registers associated with trap management include vertical position trap enablement status
(\n[.vpt]), distance to the next trap (\n[.t]), amount of needed (.ne-requested) space
that caused the most recent vertical position trap to be sprung (\n[.ne]), amount of
needed space truncated from the amount requested (\n[.trunc]), page ejection status
(\n[.pe]), and leading space count (\n[.lsn]) with its corresponding amount of motion
(\n[.lss]).
Page location traps
A page location trap is a vertical position trap that applies to the page; that is, to
undiverted output. Many can be present; manage them with the wh and ch requests. Non-
negative page locations given to these requests set the trap relative to the top of the
page; negative values set the trap relative to the bottom of the page. It is not possible
to plant a trap less than one basic unit from the page bottom: a location of “-0” is
interpreted as “0”, the top of the page. An existing visible trap (see below) at the same
location is removed; this is .wh's sole function if its second argument is missing.
A trap is sprung only if it is visible, meaning that its location is reachable on the page
and it is not hidden by another trap at the same location already planted there. (A trap
planted at “20i” or “-30i” will not be sprung on a page of length “11i”.)
A trap above the top or at or below the bottom of the page can be made visible by either
moving it into the page area or increasing the page length so that the trap is on the
page. Negative trap values always use the current page length; they are not converted to
an absolute vertical position. Use .ptr to dump page location traps to the standard error
stream; their positions are reported in basic units.
The implicit page trap
An implicit page trap always exists in the top-level diversion; it works like a trap in
some ways but not others. Its purpose is to eject the current page and start the next
one. It has no name, so it cannot be moved or deleted with wh or ch requests. You cannot
hide it by placing another trap at its location, and can move it only by redefining the
page length with .pl. Its operation is suppressed when vertical page traps are disabled
with the vpt request.
Diversions
In roff systems it is possible to format text as if for output, but instead of writing it
immediately, one can divert the formatted text into a named storage area. It is retrieved
later by specifying its name after a control character. The same name space is used for
such diversions as for strings and macros; see section “Identifiers” above. Such text is
sometimes said to be “stored in a macro”, but this coinage obscures the important
distinction between macros and strings on one hand and diversions on the other; the former
store unformatted input text, and the latter capture formatted output. Diversions also do
not interpret arguments. Applications of diversions include “keeps” (preventing a page
break from occurring at an inconvenient place by forcing a set of output lines to be set
as a group), footnotes, tables of contents, and indices. For orthogonality it is said
that GNU troff is in the top-level diversion if no diversion is active (that is, formatted
output is being “diverted” immediately to the output device.
Dereferencing an undefined diversion will create an empty one of that name and cause a
warning in category mac to be emitted. (see section “Warnings” in troff(1)). A diversion
does not exist for the purpose of testing with the d conditional operator until its
initial definition ends (see subsection “Conditional expressions” above).
The di request creates a diversion, including any partially collected line. da appends to
a diversion, creating one if it does not already exist. If the diversion's name already
exists as an alias, the target of the alias is replaced or appended to; see section
“Strings” above. box and boxa works similarly, but ignore partially collected lines.
Call any of these macros again without an argument to end the diversion.
Diversions can be nested. The registers .d, .z, dn, and dl report information about the
current (or last closed) diversion. .h is meaningful in diversions, including the top
level.
The \! and \? escape sequences and output request escape from a diversion, the first two
to the enclosing level and the last to the top level. This facility is termed transparent
embedding.
The asciify and unformat requests reprocess diversions.
Punning names
Macros, strings, and diversions share a name space; see section “Identifiers” above.
Internally, the same mechanism is used to store them. You can thus call a macro with
string interpolation syntax and vice versa. Interpolating a string does not hide existing
macro arguments. The sequence \\ can be placed at the end of a line in a macro definition
or, within a macro definition, immediately after the interpolation of a macro as a string
to suppress the effect of a newline.
Environments
Environments store most of the parameters that control text processing. A default
environment named “0” exists when troff starts up; it is modified by formatting-related
requests and escape sequences.
You can create new environments and switch among them. Only one is current at any given
time. Active environments are managed using a stack, a data structure supporting “push”
and “pop” operations. The current environment is at the top of the stack. The same
environment name can be pushed onto the stack multiple times, possibly interleaved with
others. Popping the environment stack does not destroy the current environment; it
remains accessible by name and can be made current again by pushing it at any time.
Environments cannot be renamed or deleted, and can only be modified when current. To
inspect the environment stack, use the pev request; see section “Debugging” below.
Environments store the following information.
• a partially collected line, if any
• data about the most recently output glyph and line (registers .cdp, .cht, .csk, .n, .w)
• typeface parameters (size, family, style, height and slant, inter-word and inter-
sentence space sizes)
• page parameters (line length, title length, vertical spacing, line spacing, indentation,
line numbering, centering, right-alignment, underlining, hyphenation parameters)
• filling enablement; adjustment enablement and mode
• tab stops; tab, leader, escape, control, no-break control, hyphenation, and margin
characters
• input line traps
• stroke and fill colors
The ev request pushes to and pops from the environment stack, while evc copies a named
environment's contents to the current one.
Underlining
In RUNOFF (see roff(7)), underlining, even of lengthy passages, was straightforward
because only fixed-pitch printing devices were targeted. Typesetter output posed a
greater challenge. There exists a groff request .ul (see above) that underlines
subsequent source lines on terminal devices, but on typesetters, it selects an italic font
style instead. The ms macro package (see groff_ms(7)) offers a macro .UL, but it too
produces the desired effect only on typesetters, and has other limitations.
One could adapt ms's approach to the construction of a macro as follows.
.de UNDERLINE
. ie n \\$1\f[I]\\$2\f[P]\\$3
. el \\$1\Z'\\$2'\v'.25m'\D'l \w'\\$2'u 0'\v'-.25m'\\$3
..
If doclifter(1) makes trouble, change the macro name UNDERLINE into some 2-letter word,
like Ul. Moreover, change the form of the font selection escape sequence from \f[P] to
\fP.
Underlining without macro definitions
If one does not want to use macro definitions, e.g., when doclifter gets lost, use the
following.
.ds u1 before
.ds u2 in
.ds u3 after
.ie n \*[u1]\f[I]\*[u2]\f[P]\*[u3]
.el \*[u1]\Z'\*[u2]'\v'.25m'\D'l \w'\*[u2]'u 0'\v'-.25m'\*[u3]
When using doclifter, it might be necessary to change syntax forms such as \[xy] and
\*[xy] to those supported by AT&T troff: \*(xy and \(xy, and so on.
Then these lines could look like
.ds u1 before
.ds u2 in
.ds u3 after
.ie n \*[u1]\fI\*(u2\fP\*(u3
.el \*(u1\Z'\*(u2'\v'.25m'\D'l \w'\*(u2'u 0'\v'-.25m'\*(u3
The result looks like
before in after
Underlining by overstriking with \(ul
The \z escape sequence writes a glyph without advancing the drawing position, enabling
overstriking. Thus, \zc\(ul formats c with an underrule glyph on top of it. Video
terminals implement the underrule by setting a character cell's underline attribute, so
this technique works in both nroff and troff modes.
Long words may then look intimidating in the input; a clarifying approach might be to use
the input line continuation escape sequence \newline to place each underlined character on
its own input line. Thus,
.nf
\&\fB: ${\fIvar\fR\c
\zo\(ul\
\zp\(ul\c
\&\fIvalue\fB}
.fi
produces
: ${varopvalue}
as output.
Compatibility mode
The differences between the roff language recognized by GNU troff and that of AT&T troff,
as well as the device, font, and device-independent intermediate output formats described
by CSTR #54 are documented in groff_diff(7). groff provides an AT&T compatibility mode.
The .cp request and registers .C and .cp set and test the enablement of this mode.
Debugging
Preprocessors use the .lf request to preserve the identities of line numbers and names of
input files. groff emits a variety of error diagnostics and supports several categories
of warning; the output of these can be selectively suppressed with .warn (and see the -E,
-w, and -W options of troff(1)). A trace of the formatter's input processing stack can be
emitted when errors or warnings occur by means of troff(1)'s -b option, or produced on
demand with the .backtrace request. .tm, .tmc, and .tm1 can be used to emit customized
diagnostic messages or for instrumentation while troubleshooting. .ex and .ab cause early
termination with successful and error exit codes respectively, to halt further processing
when continuing would be fruitless. Examine the state of the formatter with requests that
write lists of defined names—macros, strings, and diversions—(.pm); environments (.pev),
registers (.pnr), and page location traps (.ptr) to the standard error stream.
Authors
This document was written by by Trent A. Fisher, Werner Lemberg, and G. Branden Robinson
⟨g.branden.robinson@gmail.com⟩. Section “Underlining” was primarily written by Bernd
Warken ⟨groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de⟩.
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”.
“Troff User's Manual” by Joseph F. Ossanna, 1976 (revised by Brian W. Kernighan, 1992),
AT&T Bell Laboratories Computing Science Technical Report No. 54, widely called simply
“CSTR #54”, documents the language, device and font description file formats, and device-
independent output format referred to collectively in groff documentation as “AT&T troff”.
“A Typesetter-independent TROFF” by Brian W. Kernighan, 1982, AT&T Bell Laboratories
Computing Science Technical Report No. 97 (CSTR #97), provides additional insights into
the device and font description file formats and device-independent output format.
groff(1)
is the preferred interface to the groff system; it manages the pipeline that
carries a source document through preprocessors, the troff formatter, and an output
driver to viewable or printable form. It also exhaustively lists the man pages
provided with the GNU roff system.
groff_char(7)
discusses character encoding issues, escape sequences that produce glyphs, and
enumerates groff's predefined special character escape sequences.
groff_diff(7)
covers differences between the GNU troff formatter, its device and font description
file formats, its device-independent output format, and those of AT&T troff, whose
design it reimplements.
groff_font(5)
describes the formats of the files that describe devices (DESC) and fonts.
groff_tmac(5)
surveys macro packages provided with groff, describes how documents can take
advantage of them, offers guidance on writing macro packages and using diversions,
and includes historical information on macro package naming conventions.
roff(7)
presents a detailed history of roff systems and summarizes concepts common to them.