GROFFER linux command manual

GROFFER(1)                                                         GROFFER(1)



NAME
       groffer - display groff files and man pages on X and tty

SYNOPSIS
       groffer [viewing_options] [man_options] [groff_options] [--] [file-
               spec...]
       groffer -h|--help
       groffer -v|--version

       viewing_options
              These options determine and configure the display  mode.   They
              were  synchronized  with  the  options of both groff(1) and GNU
              man(1).  As groff uses almost any letter in its option set, on-
              ly  long option names are available for most features.  If none
              of these options is used groffer tries to find a suitable  dis-
              play mode automatically.

              [-Q|--source]         [-T|--device device]        [--auto-modes
              mode1,mode2,...]  [--debug] [--default]  [--dvi]  [--dvi-viewer
              prog]  [--groff]  [--location]  [--mode display_mode]  [--pager
              program] [--pdf] [--pdf-viewer prog] [--ps]  [--ps-viewer prog]
              [--shell] [--tty] [--www] [--www-viewer prog] [--x] [--x-viewer
              prog]

              The following long options were adapted from the  corresponding
              X Toolkit options with a single leading minus; see X(1).

              [--bd]    [--bg|--background]    [--bw]    [--display]    [--fg
              |--foreground]       [--ft|--font]        [--geometry size_pos]
              [--resolution value] [--rv] [--title string] [--xrm X_resource]

       groff_options
              Any combination of (short) options from the groff(1) program is
              accepted;  the options that are not explicitly handled by grof-
              fer are transparently passed to groff.  Due to  the  automatism
              in  groffer,  none  of these groff options should be necessary,
              except for advanced usage.

              Because of the special outputting behavior of the groff options
              -V,  -X, and -Z, groffer was designed to be switched into groff
              mode by each of these options; in this mode, the groffer  view-
              ing features are disabled.

              The  other  groff  options do not switch the mode, but allow to
              customize the formatting process.  Useful groff formatting  op-
              tions  include -m (to add macro files that cannot be recognized
              by grog), and -T (to specify  an  alternative  device  for  the
              modes tty and x).

       man_options
              These  options regulate whether and how man pages are searched.
              They are compatible with the long options of the GNU  man  pro-
              gram.

              [--all]  [--ascii] [--apropos] [--ditroff] [--extension suffix]
              [--locale language]    [--local-file]    [--man]     [--manpath
              dir1:dir2:...]     [--no-location]    [--no-man]    [--sections
              sec1:sec2:...]    [--systems sys1,sys2,...]     [--troff-device
              device] [--whatis]

              The GNU man long options that are not mentioned are recognized,
              but they are just ignored because  of  alternative  implementa-
              tions.   The  full set of long and short options of the GNU man
              program can be passed via the environment variable $MANOPT; see
              man(1) if your system has GNU man installed.

       filespec
              is  a  sequence  of  file  names  or  templates  for  searching
              man pages, see man(1).  A filespec can have one of the  follow-
              ing forms.

              filename  the path name of an existing file.

              -         stands  for standard input (can occur several times).

              man:name(section)
                        search the man page name in section section.

              man:name.section
                        search the man page name in section section.

              man:name  search the man page name in the lowest available sec-
                        tion.

              name(section)
                        search the man page name in section section.

              name.section
                        search the man page name in section section.

              standard_section
                        if this is '1', ..., '9', 'o', or 'n' try to retrieve
                        the next argument as a man page in this section.

              name      search for the man page name in the lowest  available
                        section.

              No filespec parameters means standard input.

       For details on the options, see section OPTIONS.

DESCRIPTION
       The  groffer  program  is part of groff(7).  It can be used to display
       arbitrary documents written in the roff(7) formatting language in sev-
       eral different ways, in an X window viewer program or in a text termi-
       nal.  The viewer programs can be chosen as  the  groff  native  viewer
       gxditview(1), a Postcript or dvi display program, or a web browser.

       A  search  facility for manual pages ( man pages) is provided.  Almost
       the whole functionality of the GNU man program was provided  or  suit-
       ably  adapted.  This makes the groffer program a valuable tool on sys-
       tems with a poor man system.

       The program always concatenates all input specified by the  non-option
       parameters  of the calling command line or standard input.  Compressed
       standard input or files are decompressed on-the-fly.

       Normally, the input is run through the groff(1) text processor  before
       being displayed.  By using the option -Q, the roff source code is dis-
       played without formatting.

       The formatting process can be regulated by all options that are avail-
       able groff.  By using the -T option, groffer can be switched to behave
       exactly like groff without using its viewer facilities, but  addition-
       ally with the search and decompression features.

       All  necessary  options can be determined automatically.  For example,
       the groffer program internally uses the grog(1) program  to  determine
       from  the  unformatted  document which preprocessors should be run and
       which macro files should be included.  But all parts  of  the  program
       can be controlled manually by suitable options.

OPTIONS
       The  groffer  program provides its own parser for command line options
       that is compatible to both POSIX getopts(1) and  GNU  getopt(1).   The
       command  line  behaves  as usually.  For completeness, the details are
       provided here.

   Option Parsing
       The following types of options are supported, equally on  all  systems
       that are able to run the groffer program:

       ? single character options are always preceded by a single minus char-
         acter, for example, -c.

       ? the argument for a single character option is the next command  line
         argument,  for  example,  -o   arg, or can be appended to the option
         character within the same argument -o arg.

       ? clusters of such single character options without an argument, even-
         tually terminated by a single character option with an argument; for
         example, -abo arg is equivalent to -a -b -o arg .

       ? Long options, that means option with names longer than one character
         are always prededed by a double minus; an option argument can either
         go to the next command line argument or be appended  with  an  equal
         sign  to  the  argument;  for  example, --long= arg is equivalent to
         --long  arg.

       ? An argument of -- ends option parsing; all further command line  ar-
         guments are interpreted as filespec arguments.

       ? By  default, all command line arguments that are neither options nor
         option arguments are interpreted as filespec parameters  and  stored
         until option parsing has finished.  For example, the command line
         sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file 2
         is, by default, equivalent to
         sh# groffer -a -o arg -- file1 file 2

       ? This  behavior  can  be  changed by setting the environment variable
         $POSIXLY_CORRECT to a non-empty value; in this case, option process-
         ing  is  stopped  as soon as the first non-option argument is found.
         For example, in posixly correct mode, the command line
         sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file 2
         is equivalent to
         sh# groffer -- file1 -a -o arg file 2
         As this leads to unwanted behavior in most cases, most people do not
         want to set $POSIXLY_CORRECT.

   Compatibility with Options from other Programs
       All  short options of groffer are compatible with the short options of
       groff(1).  Some of the groff options  were  given  a  special  meaning
       within groffer.  All other groff options are supported by groffer, but
       they are just transparently transferred to groff without any interven-
       tion.   Therefore  these  transparent options are not documented here,
       but in groff(1).

       All long options of groffer are compatible with the  long  options  of
       man(1).   Most  of the man long options were implemented as native op-
       tions into groffer.  These options are documented  in  the  following;
       the other man options are recognized, but ignored.

   Native groffer Options
       -h     Print usage message to standard error and exit.

       -Q     Output  the  roff  source  code of the input files unprocessed.
              This is the equivalent --mode source.

       -T devname
              Switch to --mode device, thus disabling  the  groffer  viewing.
              Instead,  the  input is formatted and postprocessed using plain
              groff with devname as the output device.   The  allowed  device
              names are listed in groff(1).  Note that this forces all device
              names that begin  with  the  letter  X  to  be  displayed  with
              gxditview(1);  all  other  device names generate output for the
              specified device; this is printed onto standard output  without
              a pager.

       -v     Print version information onto standard error.

       -V     Switch  into  groff mode and format the input with groff option
              -V; this produces the groff calling pipe without formatting the
              input.   This an advanced option from groff(1), only useful for
              debugging.

       -X     Switch into groff mode and format the input with  groff  option
              -X;  actually,  this  formats  the  input  and displays it with
              gxditview(1).  This differs from groffer's mode x because grof-
              fer's viewer options are not used, but the viewer is configured
              like in groff with the groff option -P.   This  option  is  in-
              hereted from groff(1).

       -Z     Switch  into  groff mode and format the input with groff option
              -Z; this produces the groff intermediate output  without  post-
              processing;  see  groff_out(1).   This  an advanced option from
              groff(1), useful for debugging.

       --all  In searching man pages, retrieve all suitable ones  instead  of
              only one.

       --apropos
              Instead  of displaying, start the 'apropos' command for search-
              ing within man page descriptions; only kept  for  compatibility
              with 'man'.

       --auto-modes mode1,mode2,...
              Set  the  sequence of modes for default mode to the comma sepa-
              rated list given in the argument.

       --background color
              This is equivalent to --bg.

       --bd pixels
              Specifies the color of the border surrounding the  viewer  win-
              dow.  This is an adaption of the X Toolkit option -bd.  The ar-
              gument is an X color name, see (1) for details.

       --bg color
              Set the background color of the  viewer  window.   This  is  an
              adaption  of  the  X  Toolkit option -bg.  The argument is an X
              color name, see (1) for details.

       --bw pixels
              Specifies the width in pixels of  the  border  surrounding  the
              viewer  window  (not  available  for  all viewers).  This is an
              adaption of the X Toolkit option -bw.

       --debug
              Print debugging information.  Actually, a function  call  stack
              is printed if an error occurs.

       --default
              Reset  all configuration from previously processed command line
              options to the default values.  This is useful to wipe out  all
              effects  of  former options and restart option processing using
              only the rest of the command line.

       --device
              Eqivalent to -T.

       --display X-display
              Set the X display on which the viewer program shall be started,
              see X(1) for the syntax of the argument.

       --ditroff
              Eqivalent  to  -Z.   This  is  kept  for  compatibiliy with GNU
              man(1).

       --dvi  Choose dvi mode; the formatted input is displayed with  the  by
              default, the formatted input is displayed with the xdvi(1) pro-
              gram.

       --dvi-viewer prog
              Set the viewer program for dvi mode.  This can be a  file  name
              or a program to be searched in $PATH.  Known dvi viewers inlude
              xdvi(1) and dvilx(1) In each case, arguments  can  be  provided
              additionally.

       --extension suffix
              Restrict man page search to file names that have suffix append-
              ed to their section element.  For example,  in  the  file  name
              /usr/share/man/man3/terminfo.3ncurses.gz the man page extension
              is ncurses.  Originates from GNU man.

       --foreground color
              This is equivalent to -fg.

       --fg color
              Set the foreground color of the  viewer  window.   This  is  an
              adaption  of  the  X  Toolkit option -bg.  The argument is an X
              color name, see (1) for details.

       --font font_name
              This is equivalent to -ft.

       --ft font_name
              Set the font used by the viewer window.  This is an adaption of
              the  X Toolkit option -ft.  The argument is an X font name, see
              (1) for details.

       --geometry size_pos
              Set the geometry of the display window, that means its size and
              its  starting  position.  See X(1) for details on the syntax of
              the argument.  If the actual display mode is not  X  then  this
              option is ignored.

       --groff
              Set  groff  mode.   Switch  groffer  to  process the input like
              groff(1).  This disables  the  groffer  viewing  features,  all
              groffer viewing options are ignored.

       --help Eqivalent to -h.

       --location
              Print the location of the retrieved files to standard error.

       --locale language
              Set  the  language  for man pages.  This option originates from
              GNU man(1).

       --man  Check the non-option command line arguments  (filespecs)  first
              on  being  man  pages,  then whether they represent an existing
              file.  By default, a filespec is first tested if it is  an  ex-
              isting file.

       --manpath 'dir1:dir2:...'
              Use  the specified search path for retrieving man pages instead
              of the program defaults.  If the argument is set to  the  empty
              string "" the search for man page is disabled.

       --mode value
              Set  the  display  mode.   The following mode values are recog-
              nized:

              auto   Display in the default manner; this  actually  means  to
                     try  the  modes ps, x, and tty in this sequence.  Useful
                     for restoring default mode when  a  different  mode  was
                     specified with $GROFFER_OPT.

              dvi    Display formatted input in a dvi viewer program; equiva-
                     lent to --dvi.

              pdf    Display formatted input in a PDF (Portable Document For-
                     mat) viewer program; equivalent to --pdf.

              ps     Display  formatted input in a Postscript viewer program;
                     equivalent to --ps.

              tty    Display formatted input in a text  terminal;  equivalent
                     to --tty.

              www    Display  formatted  input in a internet browser program;
                     equivalent to --www.

              x      Display formatted input in a native roff viewer such  as
                     gxditview(1);equivalentto --x.

              The  following  modes  do not use the groffer viewing features.
              They are only interesting for advanced applications.

              groff  Generate device output with plain  groff  without  using
                     the  special  viewing features of groffer.  If no device
                     was specified by option -T the groff default ps  is  as-
                     sumed.

              source Display source code; same as -Q.

       --no-location
              Do  not  display the location of retireved files; this resets a
              former call to --location.

       --no-man
              Do not check for man pages.

       --pager
              Set the pager program in tty mode; default is less.

       --pdf  Choose pdf mode (Portable Document Format).   By  default,  the
              input  is  formatted by groff using the Postscript device, then
              it is transformed into the PDF file format using gs(1) (this is
              quite  slow),  and finally displayed either with the xpdf(1) or
              the acroread(1) program; this can  be  configured  with  option
              --viewer-pdf.  PDF has a big advantage because the text is dis-
              played graphically  and  is  searchable  nevertheless;  but  as
              thtransformation  into pdf takes a considerable amount of time,
              the pdf mode is not suitable as a default device for  the  auto
              mode.   The  only device that is compatible to this mode is ps,
              which is also the default when no device is specified.

       --pdf-viewer prog
              Set the viewer program for pdf mode.  This can be a  file  name
              or  a program to be searched in $PATH.  In each case, arguments
              can be provided additionally.

       --ps   Choose ps mode (Postscript).  By default, the  formatted  input
              is displayed with the ghostview(1) program; this can be config-
              ured with option --viewer-ps.  The only device that is compati-
              ble  to  this mode is ps, which is also the default when no de-
              vice is specified.

       --ps-viewer prog
              Set the viewer program for ps mode.  This can be a file name or
              a  program  to be searched in $PATH.  Common Postscript viewers
              inlude gv(1), ghostview(1), and gs(1), In each case,  arguments
              can be provided additionally.

       --resolution value
              Set  X  resolution  in  dpi (dots per inch) in some viewer pro-
              grams.  The only supported dpi values are 75 and 100.  This  is
              an adaption of the X Toolkit option -resolution.

       --rv   Reverse  foreground  and background color of the viewer window.
              This is an adaption of the X Toolkit option -rv.  This  feature
              is not available in all viewer programs.

       --sections
              Restrict  searching  for  man  pages  to  the given sections, a
              colon-separated list.

       --shell shell_program
              Specify the shell under which the groffer script should be run.
              The script first tests whether this option is set (either with-
              in $GROFF_OPT or as a command line option); if so,  the  script
              is  rerun under the shell program specified with the option ar-
              gument.

       --source
              Equivalent to -Q.

       --systems
              Search for man pages for the given operating systems; the argu-
              ment systems is a comma-separated list.

       --title 'some text'
              Set  the  title  for  the  viewer  window.  This feature is not
              available in all viewer programs.

       --to-postproc opt_or_arg
              Eqivalent to -P.

       --troff-device
              Eqivalent to -T.  This option is only  kept  for  compatibility
              with GNU man(1).

       --tty  Choose  tty display mode, that means displaying in a text pager
              even when in X; eqivalent to --mode tty.

       --version
              Eqivalent to -v.

       --whatis
              Instead of displaying the content, get the  one-liner  descrip-
              tion  from the retrieved man page files -- or say that it is not
              a man page.

       --where
              Eqivalent to --location.

       --www  Choose www mode (html), display in a web browser program, which
              can be specified with option --www-viewer.  By default, the ex-
              istence of a sequence  of  standard  web  browsers  is  tested,
              starting with mozilla(1) and netscape(1)

       --www-viewer prog
              Set the web browser program for viewing in www mode.  Each pro-
              gram that accepts  html  input  and  allows  the  file://local-
              host/dir/file syntax on the command line is suitable; it can be
              the path name of an executable file or a program in $PATH.   In
              each case, arguments can be provided additionally.

       --x    Choose x mode (view in X roff viewer).  By default, the format-
              ted input is displayed with  the  gxditview(1)  program,  being
              distributed  together with groff, or with xditview(1), which is
              distributed as a standard X tool.  This can be configured  with
              option  --x-viewer.  The only devices (option -T) that are com-
              patible with this mode are X75, X100, X75-12, X100-12,  and  ps
              (the default device).

       --x-viewer prog
              Set  the  viewer  program for x mode.  Suitable viewer programs
              are gxditview(1) and xditview(1).  But the argument can be  any
              executable file or a program in $PATH.  In each case, arguments
              can be provided additionally.

       --     Signals the end of option processing; all  remaining  arguments
              are interpreted as filespec parameters.

       Besides  these,  groffer  accepts all arguments that are valid for the
       groff(1) program.  All non-groffer options  are  sent  unmodified  via
       grog  to  groff.   Postprocessors,  macro packages, compatibility with
       classical troff, and much more can be manually specified.

OUTPUT MODES
       By default, the groffer program formats the input and  then  automati-
       cally  chooses  a  suitable display mode, but the user can also choose
       between the following modes:

       ? graphically display the formatted input with an  X  window  program,
         including

         ? with X window roff viewers such as gxditview(1) (x mode),

         ? in a dvi viewer program (dvi mode),

         ? in a Postscript viewer (ps mode),

         ? in a PDF viewer (pdf mode),

         ? in a web browser (www mode),

       ? display formatted input in a pager on the text terminal (tty mode),

       ? run  groffer like groff, but with decompression and man page search-
         ing (groff mode); this includes things like generating the groff in-
         termediate output.

       ? stream the unformatted source code of the input onto standard output
         (source mode),

       By default, groffer first tries whether x mode is  possible,  then  ps
       mode,  and  finally  tty mode.  This mode testing sequence for default
       mode can be changed by specifying a comma separated list of modes with
       the option --default-modes.

       The searching for man pages and the decompression of the input are ac-
       tive in every mode.

   Graphical Display Modes
       The graphical display modes work only in the X window environment  (or
       similar implementations within other windowing environments).  The en-
       vironment variable $DISPLAY or the option --display are used for spec-
       ifying  the X display to be used; if neither is specified, groffer as-
       sumes that no X is running.

       A certain graphical display mode can be selected by one of the options
       --dvi,  --pdf,  --ps, -X, and --www.  By default, some graphical modes
       are tried first.  If none succeeds groffer switches to tty mode.

       The graphical modes can be customized by options that were  named  ac-
       cording  to the resource options in the X(1) Toolkit but using a lead-
       ing double minus instead of the single minus used by X.  These include
       --background,  --foreground, --geometry, --resolution, --title, --xrm,
       etc.

       The pdf mode has a major advantage -- it is the only  graphical  diplay
       mode  that  allows to search for text within the viewer; this can be a
       really important feature.  Unfortunately, it  takes  a  long  time  to
       transform  the  input into the PDF format, so it was not chosen as the
       major mode.  You can change this by the options --pdf and --auto-modes
       .

   Displaying on a tty
       If  the variable $DISPLAY is not set or empty, groffer assumes that it
       should produce output on a text  terminal.   This  mode  can  also  be
       forced by option --tty.

       In the actual implementation, the groff output device latin1 is chosen
       and the processed output is piped into a pager program.  This  can  be
       changed by specifying option --tty-device.

       The  pager  to be used can be specified by option --pager by the envi-
       ronment variable $PAGER.  If this is not set or empty the less(1) pro-
       gram is used as the default pager.

   Non-displaying Modes
       There  are some special modes that do not display the formatted output
       in a viewer program.  These modes are regarded as advanced,  they  are
       useful for debugging purposes.

       source mode
              Instead of displaying the formatted output, it is also possible
              to have the roff source code streamed onto the standard output.
              This  mode  must  be  requested  by  one  of  the options -Q or
              --source.

       groff mode
              This mode disables the groffer viewing facilities.   The  input
              is  handled as usual with decompression and man page searching,
              but then it is passed to groff using only the options  provided
              by  groff.   This enables the user to save the generated output
              into a file or pipe it into another program.  In this mode, the
              input is formatted, but not postprocessed; see groff_out(5) for
              details.  This mode is activated  automatically  by  the  three
              groff  options -V (print roff pipe, no formatting), -X (display
              with gxditview in groff's native way, using -P  for  customiza-
              tion),  and  -Z  (disable  post-processing,  thus producing the
              groff intermediate output).

FILE PARAMETERS
       The non-option command line parameters determine which files should be
       displayed.

   Filespecs
       The  default behavior of groffer is to first test whether the file pa-
       rameter is represents a local file; if not, it is assumed to represent
       a  filespec  for searching one or more man page.  This behavior can be
       modified by options.

       --man  forces to  interpret  all  file  parameters  as  filespecs  for
              searching man pages.

       --no-man
       --local-file
              disable the man searching; so only local files are displayed.

       The  following  parameter formats are recognized to represent a wanted
       man page.

       man:name(section)
              the quasi-URL notation used in many Desktop systems  to  repre-
              sent the man page name in section.

       man:name
              search  the  man  page  name in the lowest section.  The corre-
              sponding command with the man program would be
              sh# man name

       name.section
              the man page name in section.  The corresponding  command  with
              the man program would be
              sh# man section name

       name   if name is not an existing file search for the man page name in
              the lowest section just like
              sh# man name

       section name
              Even this curious construct known from the various man programs
              is handled.  For example,
              sh# groffer 7 groff
              was modelled according to
              sh# man 7 groff
              retrieves  the  man  page named groff in section 7.  Only a few
              standard section names are accepted, being actually the  number
              sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, and the lower case let-
              ters 'o' and 'n'.

       If neither a local file nor a man page was retrieved for some file pa-
       rameter  a warning is issued on standard error, but processing is con-
       tinued.

   Man Page Searching
       The groffer program provides a search facility for system manual pages
       (man pages).  All long options, all environment variables, and most of
       the functionality of the GNU man(1) program were implemented.

       Preformatted man pages (cat pages) are intentionally excluded from the
       search  because  groffer is a roff program that wants to format by its
       own, not spit out stuff that was digested previously by someone  else.
       With the excellent performance of the actual computers, the preformat-
       ted man pages aren't necessary any longer.  Due  to  their  inflexible
       nature,  they  tend to provoke some trouble with changing line lengths
       and different environments in networks.

       The algorithm for retrieving man pages uses five search methods.  They
       are successively tried until a method works.

       ? The  search  path  can  be  manually  specified  by using the option
         --manpath.  An empty argument disables the man page searching.  This
         overwrites the other methods.

       ? If  this  is  not  available  the  environment  variable $MANPATH is
         searched.

       ? If this is empty, the program tries to read it from the  environment
         variable $MANOPT.

       ? If this does not work, the manpath(1) program for determining a path
         of man directories is tried.

       ? If this does not work a reasonable  default  path  is  searched  for
         man pages.

       After  this, the path elements for the language (locale) and operating
       system specific man pages are added to the man path; their sequence is
       determined  automatically.   For example, both /usr/share/man/linux/fr
       and /usr/share/man/fr/linux for french linux man pages are found.  The
       language  and operating system names are determined from both environ-
       ment variables and command line options.

       The locale (language) is determined like in  GNU  man,  that  is  from
       highest to lowest precedence:

       ? --locale

       ? $GROFFER_OPT

       ? $MANOPT

       ? $LCALL

       ? $LC_MESSAGES

       ? $LANG.

       The  language  locale  is  usually specified in the POSIX 1003.1 based
       format:

       [_[.[,]]],

       but the two-letter code in  is sufficient for most purposes.

       If  no  man  pages for a complicated locale are found the country part
       consisting of the first two characters (without the '_', '.', and ',',
       parts) of the locale is searched as well.

       If  still not found the corresponding man page in the default language
       is used instead.  As usual, this default can be specified by one of  C
       or  POSIX.   The  man pages in the default language are usually in En-
       glish.

       Several operating systems can be given by appending their names, sepa-
       rated  by a comma.  This is then specified by the environment variable
       $SYSTEM or by the command line option --systems.   The  precedence  is
       similar  to  the  locale case above from highest to lowest precedence:
       Topic --systems

       ? $GROFFER_OPT

       ? $MANOPT

       ? $SYSTEM.

       When searching for man pages this man path with  the  additional  lan-
       guage and system specific directories is used.

       The  search  can  further be restricted by limiting it to certain sec-
       tions.  A single section can be specified within a  filespec,  several
       sections  as  a colon-separated list in command line option --sections
       or environment variable $MANSECT.  When no section was specified a set
       of  standard sections is searched until a suitable man page was found.

       Finally, the search can be restricted to a so-called extension.   This
       is  a  postfix  that  acts  like a subsection.  It can be specified by
       --extension or environment variable $EXTENSION.

       For further details on man page searching, see man(1).

   Decompression
       The program has a decompression facility.  If standard input or a file
       that was retrieved from the command line parameters is compressed with
       a format that is supported by either gzip(1) or bzip2(1) it is  decom-
       pressed  on-the-fly.   This includes the GNU .gz, .bz2, and the tradi-
       tional .Z compression.  The program displays the concatenation of  all
       decompressed  input  in the sequence that was specified on the command
       line.

ENVIRONMENT
       The groffer programs supports many system variables, most of  them  by
       courtesy of other programs.  All environment variables of groff(1) and
       GNU man(1) and some standard system variables are honored.

   Native groffer Variables
       $GROFFER_OPT
              Store options for a run of groffer.  The options  specified  in
              this  variable  are overridden by the options given on the com-
              mand line.  The content of this variable  is  run  through  the
              shell  builitin  'eval'; so arguments containing white-space or
              special shell characters should be quoted.

   System Variables
       The groffer program is a shell script that  is  run  through  /bin/sh,
       which  can  be internally linked to programs like bash(1).  The corre-
       sponding system environment is automatically effective.  The following
       variables have a special meaning for groffer.

       $DISPLAY
              If this variable is set this indicates that the X window system
              is running.  Testing this variable decides on whether graphical
              or  text  output  is  generated.   This  variable should not be
              changed by the user carelessly, but it can be used to start the
              graphical groffer on a remote X terminal.  For example, depend-
              ing on your system, groffer can be started on the second  moni-
              tor by the command
              sh# DISPLAY=:0.1 groffer what.ever&

       $LC_ALL
       $LC_MESSAGES
       $LANG  If  one  of these variables is set (in the above sequence), its
              content is interpreted as the locale, the language to be  used,
              especially  when  retrieving man pages.  A locale name is typi-
              cally of  the  form  language[_territory[.codeset[@modifier]]],
              where language is an ISO 639 language code, territory is an ISO
              3166 country code, and codeset is a character set  or  encoding
              identifier like ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8; see setlocale(3).  The lo-
              cale values C  and  POSIX  stand  for  the  default,  i.e.  the
              man  page  directories  without a language prefix.  This is the
              same behavior as when all 3 variables are unset.

       $PAGER This variable can be used to set the pager for the tty  output.
              For  example, to disable the use of a pager completely set this
              variable to the cat(1) program
              sh# PAGER=cat groffer anything

       $PATH  All programs within the groffer shell script are called without
              a  fixed  path.   Thus this environment variable determines the
              set of programs used within the run of groffer.

       $POSIXLY_CORRECT
              If set to a non-empty value this chooses the POSIX mode for op-
              tion processing, that means that option processing will be fin-
              ished as soon as a non-option argument is found.  Usually,  you
              do not want to set this environment variable.

   Groff Variables
       The  groffer  program internally calls groff, so all environment vari-
       ables documented in groff(1) are internally  used  within  groffer  as
       well;  see  there  for details.  The following variables have a direct
       meaning for the groffer program.

       $GROFF_TMPDIR
              If the value of this variable is an existing, writable directo-
              ry,  groffer  uses  it for storing its temporary files, just as
              groff does.

   Man Variables
       Parts of the functionality of the  man  program  were  implemented  in
       groffer;  support  for  all environment variables documented in man(1)
       was added to groffer, but the meaning was slightly modified due to the
       different  approach  in  groffer;  but the user interface is the same.
       The man environment variables can be overwritten by  options  provided
       with $MANOPT, which in turn is overwritten by the command line.

       $EXTENSION
              Restrict  the  search for man pages to files having this exten-
              sion.  This is overridden by option --extension; see there  for
              details.

       $MANOPT
              This  variable contains options as a preset for man(1).  As not
              all of these are relevant for groffer only the essential  parts
              of  its  value  are  extracted.   The options specified in this
              variable overwrite the values of the  other  environment  vari-
              ables  taht are specific to man.  All options specified in this
              variable are overridden by the options  given  on  the  command
              line.

       $MANPATH
              If  set,  this  variable  contains the directories in which the
              man page trees  are  stored.   This  is  overridden  by  option
              --manpath.

       $MANSECT
              If  this is a colon separated list of section names, the search
              for man pages is restricted to those manual  sections  in  that
              order.  This is overridden by option --sections.

       $SYSTEM
              If this is set to a comma separated list of names these are in-
              terpreted as man page trees for  different  operating  systems.
              This variable can be overwritten by option --systems; see there
              for details.

       The environment variable $MANROFFSEQ is ignored by groffer because the
       necessary preprocessors are determined automatically.

FILES
       The  groffer  program can be preconfigured by two configuration files.
       Both of them are shell scripts that are called  at  the  beginning  of
       groffer using the '. filename' syntax.

       /etc/groff/groffer.conf
              System-wide configuration file for groffer.

       $HOME/.groff/groffer.conf
              User-specific  configuration  file for groffer, where $HOME de-
              notes the user's home directory.  This script is  called  after
              the  system-wide configuration file to enable overriding by the
              user.

       It makes sense to use these  configuration  files  for  the  following
       tasks:

       ? Preset  environment  variables  recognized  by groffer; preferably a
         variable should only be set when it is unset in order not  to  over-
         ride a user-provided value.

       ? Preset  command  line  options  by  prepending them to $GROFFER_OPT;
         prepending should be preferred to appending and setting in order not
         to delete the environment variable provided by the

       ? Write  functions  for  calling  viewer programs in a special way and
         feed them into the --*-viewer options.  Note that the name of such a
         function must coincide with some existing program in the system path
         $PATH in order to be recognized by groffer.

       As an example, consider the following configuration file.

       #! /bin/sh
       # ~/.groff/groffer.conf
       if test "$DISPLAY" = ""; then
         DISPLAY='localhost:0.0';
       fi;
       GROFF_OPT="--resolution=100 $GROFF_OPT";
       gxditview()
       {
         /usr/local/bin/gxditview --fg DarkBlue "$@";
       }

       This has the following effects:

       ? allows to start groffer in a graphical mode even from a text  termi-
         nal;

       ? all graphical modes use a resolution of 100 dpi where applicable;

       ? the  gxditview(1) program is told to use DarkBlue as the text color.
         These configurations can be overridden by command line  options  and
         by environment variable $GROFFER_OPT.

EXAMPLES
       The  usage of groffer is very easy.  Usually, it is just called with a
       file name or man page.  The following  examples,  however,  show  that
       groffer has much more fancy capabilities.

       sh# groffer /usr/local/share/doc/groff/meintro.ms.gz
              Decompress,  format  and  display  the  compressed  file  mein-
              tro.ms.gz in the directory /usr/local/share/doc/groff, using  a
              default graphical viewer when in X window, or the less(1) pager
              program when not in X.

       sh# groffer groff.7 groff 'troff(1)' man:roff
              The arguments that are not existing files are looked-up as  the
              following  man  pages:  groff  (in section 7), groff (automatic
              search, should be found in section 1), troff  (in  section  1),
              and  roff  (in  the  section with the lowest number, being 7 in
              this case).  The quotes around 'troff(1)' are necessary because
              the  paranthesis  are  special  shell characters; escaping them
              with a backslash character \( and \) would  be  possible,  too.
              The  formatted  files  are  concatenated  and  displayed in one
              piece.

       sh# LANG=de groffer --man --www --www-viever=netscape ls
              Retrieve the German man page for the ls program (or the English
              one if there is a German version), decompress it, format it in-
              to the html format and view  the  result  in  the  default  web
              browser  netscape  .   The  option  --man  guarantees  that the
              man page is retrieved, even when a local file ls exists in  the
              actual directory.

       sh# groffer -Q 'man:roff(7)'
              Print  the  unformatted  content of the man page called roff in
              section 7 on standard output.

       sh# groffer -Z -mfoo
              Decompress the standard input, switch to groff mode, format the
              input  with groff using the macro package foo, but do not post-
              process the result, thus producing the intermediate output.

       sh# echo '\f[CB]WOW!' |
       >   groffer --x --bg red --fg yellow --geometry 200x100
              Display WOW! in a small window in constant-width bold font, us-
              ing color yellow on red background.

COMPATIBILITY
       The  groffer  shell script is compatible to both POSIX and GNU.  POSIX
       compatibility refers to IEEE P1003.2/D11.2 of September 1991,  a  very
       early  version  of  this  standard.   The script uses only a quite re-
       stricted set of shell language elements and shell builtins, common  to
       all POSIX versions; the only external program used is 'sed', again on-
       ly the most basic POSIX features  of  'sed'  are  used.   The  groffer
       script  should  work on most actual free and commercial operating sys-
       tems.

       The groffer program provides its own parser for command line  options;
       it  can  handle option arguments and file names containing white space
       and a large set of special characters.

       The groffer shell script was tested with the following  common  imple-
       mentations  of  the  POSIX  shell:  ash(1), bash(1), ksh(1), and POSIX
       sh(1), and others.  Free POSIX compatible shells and  shell  utilities
       for  most  operating systems are available at the GNU software archive
       ?https://www.gnu.org/software/?.

       The best performance was obtained with the ash shell; so groffer tries
       to  run  under  ash whenever possible.  The procedure to determine the
       shell to run groffer was programmed to be as follows:

       ? the argument of the command line option --shell; if not set

       ? the argument of the  option  --shell  in  the  environment  variable
         $GROFF_OPT; if not set

       ? try ash; if not available

       ? continue  with  the  shell under which the script was started in the
         first place.

SEE ALSO
       groff(1)
       troff(1)
              Details on the options and environment variables  available  in
              groff; all of them can be used with groffer.

       grog(1)
              Internally,  groffer  tries to guess the groff command line op-
              tions from the input using this program.

       groff_out(5)
              Documentation on the groff intermediate  output  (ditroff  out-
              put).

       xdvi(1)
       dvilx(1)
              Viewers for groffer's dvi mode.

       gv(1)
       ghostview(1)
              Viewers for groffer's ps mode.
       gs(1)  Transformer from ps to pdf; and a ps viewer.

       xpdf(1)
              Viewers for pdf files.

       gxditview(1)
       xditview(1x)
              Viewers for groffer's x mode.

       gzip(1)
       bzip2(1)
              The decompression programs supported by groffer.

       man(1) The  standard  program  to  diplay  man pages.  The information
              there is only useful if it is the man page for GNU  man.   Then
              it  documents  the  options  and environment variables that are
              supported by groffer.

AUTHOR
       Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

       This document is distributed under the terms of the FDL (GNU Free Doc-
       umentation  License) version 1.1 or later.  You should have received a
       copy of the FDL on your system, it is also available  on-line  at  the
       GNU copyleft site ?https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html?.

       This  document  is  part  of groff, the GNU roff distribution.  It was
       written by Bernd Warken ?bwarken@mayn.de?.




Groff Version 1.18.1          30 September 2002                    GROFFER(1)