gropdf

Typefaces

Styles called R, I, B, and BI mounted at font positions 1 to 4. Text fonts are grouped into families A, BM, C, H, HN, N, P, and T, each having members in each of these styles.

Another text font is not a member of a family.

Special fonts include S, the PostScript Symbol font; SS, a subset of S with slanted lowercase Greek letters; EURO, which offers a Euro glyph in several styles for use with old devices lacking it; and ZD, Zapf Dingbats. In contrast to grops, gropdf does not require a reversed variant of it (ZDR); the “hand pointing left” glyph (\[lh]) is available nevertheless, since pdf.tmac defines it using the \X'pdf: xrev' device extension command (see below). Some glyphs in these fonts are unnamed and must be accessed as indexed characters, using the \N escape sequence.

The fonts corresponding to EURO and SS are unknown to the PDF standard; groff therefore provides their AFM files (font metrics) and PFA or PFB files so that they can be used with other software and embedded in PDF output.

Feature service levels and URW font support

The traditional PostScript Type 1 fonts are limited in their glyph repertoire, and the original versions from the Adobe foundry are not free software. Historically, because their presence was mandated by the PostScript standard, one could expect to find support for them in any conforming device or software PostScript renderer. PostScript (“Level 1”) initially standardized 14 typefaces: Times, Helvetica, and Courier each in four styles (which groff groups into “families”); a symbol font; and a dingbats font. PostScript Level 2 increased the number to 35, adding the families Avant Garde, Bookman, Helvetica Narrow, New Century Schoolbook, and Palatino; and a text font in one style, Zapf Chancery medium italic. A document could be small because it did not need to embed font resources unless it had unusual (for the time) glyph or typeface requirements. This situation carried over into the early years of PostScript's successor page description language, PDF. Nowadays, it is common to embed fonts in PDFs, and authorities widely recommend this practice, which increases the reliability of document rendering, and many free software fonts are available with much greater glyph coverage than Adobe's Type 1 fonts for PostScript.

gropdf attempts to work in variety of scenarios, and delivers better results when configured with supporting digital font files (for embedding) and font metrics files describing those fonts to the formatter.

• Full service is available when gropdf can locate all 35 fonts of the PostScript Level 2 standard on the file system along with their corresponding font metrics (AFM) files. The Adobe-compatible unnamed (default) foundry supports up to 256 glyphs in each typeface. Fonts from the URW foundry (“U”) are compatible extensions of the Adobe fonts with extended glyph coverage, including support for Cyrillic script. groff's build process uses afmtodit(1) to generate font description files from the URW foundry's AFM files; see section “Files” below.
• Intermediate service is available when gropdf can locate all 35 fonts of the PostScript Level 2 standard but not their corresponding font metrics (AFM) files. groff's build process copies the font description files from those for the grops(1) driver, reusing them for gropdf; this reduces glyph coverage to 256 glyphs maximum from each face, and the “U” foundry is unavailable.
• Basic service results when gropdf cannot locate all 35 fonts of the PostScript Level 2 standard. Only the base 14 fonts of the PDF standard are available, and only in the sense that the formatter can use their metrics (copied from grops font descriptions as described above). Use of the -e option to embed fonts in the generated PDF results in an error.

Device extension commands

gropdf supports many device extensions, accessed with the groff request device or roff \X escape sequence. First, it understands many of the device extensions supported by grops(1).

\X'ps: invis'

Suppress output.

\X'ps: endinvis'

Stop suppressing output.

\X'ps: exec gsave currentpoint 2 copy translate n rotate neg exch neg exch translate'

where n is the angle of rotation. This is to support the align command in pic(1).

\X'ps: exec grestore'

Used by pic(1) to restore state after rotation.

\X'ps: exec n setlinejoin'

where n can be one of the following values.

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

\X'ps: exec n setlinecap'

where n can be one of the following values.

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

gropdf also supports a subset of the commands introduced in gpresent's present.tmac.

These allow you to create presentation PDFs. Many of the other commands are already available in other macro packages.

These commands are implemented with groff X commands:-

\X'ps: exec %%%%PAUSE'

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

\X'ps: exec %%%%BEGINONCE'

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

\X'ps: exec %%%%ENDONCE'

This terminates the block defined by %%%%BEGINONCE. This pair of commands is what implements the .BLOCKS Once/.BLOCKE commands in present.tmac.

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

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

All other ps: tags are silently ignored.

gropdf also recognizes a device extension used by the DVI driver.

\X'papersize=width,length'

Set the page dimensions in centimeters to width by length. If the -l option was specified, these dimensions are swapped. Changes to the paper dimensions should occur prior to the first page, or during page ejection before starting a subsequent one.

Caution: the ordering of dimensions differs from that used by papersize.tmac and troff(1)'s “-d paper” option.

\X'pdf: markstart /ANN-definition'

\X'pdf: markend'

Macros that support PDF features use these extension commands internally to bracket hotspot text (a hyperlink). User documents should call the .pdfhref macro instead. Their application is found in other macro packages (like groff_man(7) or groff_mdoc(7)) that call .pdfhref with a -S argument, then indicate the end of hotspot text with \X'pdf: markend'\m[\*[pdf:curcol]].

\X'pdf: xrev'

Toggle the reversal of glyph direction. This feature works by reversing all following text. Each separate letter is also mirrored. One application is the reversal of glyphs in the Zapf Dingbats font. To restore the normal glyph orientation, repeat the command.

gropdf supports several more device extensions using the pdf: tag. The following have counterpart convenience macros that take the same arguments and behave equivalently.

.pdfbackground cmd left top right bottom weight

.pdfbackground off

.pdfbackground footnote bottom

\X'pdf: background cmd left top right bottom weight'

\X'pdf: background off'

\X'pdf: background footnote bottom'

Produce a background rectangle on the page.

.pdfmarksuspend

.pdfmarkrestart

\X'pdf: marksuspend'

\X'pdf: markrestart'

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

.pdfpagename name

\X'pdf: pagename name'

Assign the current page a name. All documents bear two default names, ‘top’ and ‘bottom’.

.pdfpagenumbering type prefix start

\X'pdf: pagenumbering type prefix start'

.pdfpic file alignment width height line-length

\X'pdf: pdfpic file alignment width height line-length'

Place an image from file file of desired width and height (if height is missing or zero then it is scaled proportionally). If alignment is -L the drawing is left-aligned. If it is -C or -R a line-length greater than the width of the drawing is required as well. If width is specified as zero then the width is scaled in proportion to the height. If both width and height are non-zero the image is scaled to ‘best fit’.

The availability of other software on the system, such as PerlMagick, influences the types of image files gropdf can embed in its output.

	none	file(1)	identify(1)	Image::Magick(3pm)
.pdf	✓	✓	✓	✓
.jpg	✗	✓	✓	✓
.jp2	✗	✗	✓	✓
other	✗	✗	✗	✓

See groff_tmac(5) for a description of the PDFPIC macro, which provides a convenient high-level interface for inclusion of various graphic file formats.

.pdfswitchtopage when name

\X'pdf: switchtopage when name'

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

.pdftransition scope mode duration dimension motion direction scale bool

\X'pdf: transition scope mode duration dimension motion direction scale bool'

Configure the style of page transitions, as used in “slides” (or “foils”). scope can be either SLIDE or BLOCK. SLIDE applies the transition when a new slide is introduced to the screen; BLOCK applies it to the individual blocks making up the slide.

mode is the transition type between slides:-

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any of the parameters may be replaced with a "." which signifies the parameter retains its previous value, also any trailing missing parameters are ignored.

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

Macros

gropdf's support macros in pdf.tmac define the convenience macros described above. Some features have no direct device extension escape sequence counterpart.

.pdfbookmark [-T tag-name] level text

Mark the nearest page location as a bookmark, and optionally a named destination as well. Bookmarks populate the outline pane of the reader. They are organized into a hierarchical tree; each level of the tree is numbered, starting at 1, and named as text in the outline. Named destinations permit hyperlink-style navigation within the document. Specifying -T followed by tag-name creates a named destination making the page location eligible as a target named by “.pdfhref L ...”.

.pdfhref L -D dest [-S] [-P prefix-text]

[-A suffix-text] [link-text] Create a hotspot link to dest, (the tag-name) which a “.pdfbookmark ...” or “.pdfhref M ...” call elsewhere in the document should define. (If the document employs forward references, it must be processed twice; see pdfmom(1).) If link-text is omitted the text associated with dest, when it was created, is formatted as the link text. The -P and -A arguments format their successors as text before and after the link text, respectively, without intervening space. Specifying -S prevents pdfhref from “closing” the hotspot, requiring the document (or macro package wrapping pdfhref) to do so itself with “\X'pdf: markend'\m[\*[pdf:curcol]]”.

.pdfhref M [-E] [-N tag-name] dest

Mark the nearest page location as a destination named (the first word of) dest, which should be unique within a document. Specifying -T followed by tag-name overrides this default. Specifying -E formats dest as text in the document as well.

.pdfhref W -D uri [-S] [-P prefix-text]

[-A suffix-text] link-text Create a hotspot link to uri, a World Wide Web Universal Resource Identifier (URI). The -P and -A arguments format their successors as text before and after the link text, respectively, without intervening space. Specifying -S prevents pdfhref from “closing” the hotspot, requiring the document (or macro package wrapping pdfhref) to do so itself with “\X'pdf: markend'\m[\*[pdf:curcol]]”.

.pdfinfo /field content ...

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

.pdfnote [-T title] text

Create an annotation in the document. Reader support for this feature varies. Some place an icon at the current position on the page; hovering over the icon reveals any title, while clicking on the icon pops up a window containing text.

Parameters

The following parameters, shown as roff control lines, affect the operation of gropdf.

In the foregoing, you can also spell “COLOR” in string names as “COLOUR”.

Importing PDF graphics

If you are importing an image as a PDF file, it must be a single page and the drawing must just fit inside the media size of the PDF file. In inkscape(1) or gimp(1), for example, make sure the canvas size just fits the image.

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

pdftk 
existing-file 
output 
new-file

TrueType and other font formats

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