Groff ( ) (also called GNU troff) is a typesetting system that creates formatted output when given plain text mixed with formatting commands. It is the

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

replacement for the

troff troff (), short for "typesetter roff", is the major component of a document processing system developed by Bell Labs for the Unix operating system. troff and the related nroff were both developed from the original roff. While nroff was inte ...

and

nroff nroff (short for "new roff") is a text-formatting computer program, program on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It produces output suitable for simple fixed-width computer printer, printers and computer terminal, terminal windows. It is an ...

text formatters. Groff contains a large number of helper programs,

preprocessor In computer science, a preprocessor (or precompiler) is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input in another program. The output is said to be a preprocessed form of the input data, which is often used by so ...

s, and postprocessors including eqn,

tbl Part of the troff suite of Unix document layout tools, tbl is a preprocessor that formats tables in preparation for processing with troff/nroff. Overview Mike Lesk is the original author of tbl. Like the main troff program, it uses command l ...

, pic and soelim. There are also several macro packages included that duplicate, expand on the capabilities of, or outright replace the standard troff macro packages. Groff development of new features is active, and is an important part of free, open source, and

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

derived operating systems such as

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

and 4.4 BSD derivatives — notably because troff macros are used to create

man pages A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation usually found on a Unix or Unix-like operating system. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and ev ...

, the standard form of documentation on Unix and Unix-like systems. OpenBSD has replaced groff with mandoc in the base install, since their 4.9 release. Also

macOS Ventura macOS Ventura (version 13) is the nineteenth and current major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Mac computers. The successor to macOS Monterey, it was announced at WWDC 2022 on June 6, 2022, and launched on October 24, 2 ...

History

groff is an original implementation written primarily in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

by James Clark and is modeled after

ditroff troff (), short for "typesetter roff", is the major component of a document processing system developed by Bell Labs for the Unix operating system. troff and the related nroff were both developed from the original roff. While nroff was inten ...

, including many extensions. The first version, 0.3.1, was released June 1990. The first stable version, 1.04, was announced in November 1991. groff was developed as

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

to provide an easily obtained replacement for the standard AT&T troff/nroff package, which at the time was proprietary, and was not always available even on branded

systems. In 1999, Werner Lemberg and Ted Harding took over maintenance of groff. The current version of groff is 1.22.4, released on .

Notes

References

External links

*
groff mailing list archive
(searchable)

hosted b
Nabble
archiving the groff mailing list into a searchable forum (sadly none of the emails are visible today). * gives background and examples of troff, including the GNU roff implementation.

{{GNU GNU Project software groff Free typesetting software

History

See also

Notes

References

External links