nroff - format documents with groff for TTY (terminal) devices
Contents
Description
nroff formats documents written in the groff(7) language for typewriter-like devices such as terminal emulators. GNU nroff emulates the AT&T nroff command using groff(1). nroff generates output via grotty(1), groff's terminal output driver, which needs to know the character encoding scheme used by the device. Consequently, acceptable arguments to the -T option are ascii, latin1, utf8, and cp1047; any others are ignored. If neither the GROFF_TYPESETTER environment variable nor the -T command-line option (which overrides the environment variable) specifies a (valid) device, nroff consults the locale to select an appropriate output device. It first tries the locale(1) program, then checks several locale- related environment variables; see section “Environment” below. If all of the foregoing fail, -Tascii is implied. The -b, -c, -C, -d, -E, -i, -m, -M, -n, -o, -r, -U, -w, -W, and -z options have the effects described in troff(1). -c and -h imply “-P-c” and “-P-h”, respectively; -c is also interpreted directly by troff. In addition, this implementation ignores the AT&T nroff options -e, -q, and -s (which are not implemented in groff). The options -k, -K, -p, -P, -R, -t, and -S are documented in groff(1). -V causes nroff to display the constructed groff command on the standard output stream, but does not execute it. -v and --version show version information about nroff and the programs it runs, while --help displays a usage message; all exit afterward.
Environment
Normally, the path separator in environment variables ending with PATH is the colon; this may vary
depending on the operating system. For example, Windows uses a semicolon instead.
GROFF_BIN_PATH
is a colon-separated list of directories in which to search for the groff executable before
searching in PATH. If unset, /usr/bin is used.
GROFF_TYPESETTER
specifies the default output device for groff.
LC_ALLLC_CTYPELANGLESSCHARSET
are pattern-matched in this order for contents matching standard character encodings supported by
groff in the event no -T option is given and GROFF_TYPESETTER is unset, or the values specified
are invalid.
Exit Status
nroff exits with error status 2 if there was a problem parsing its arguments, with status 0 if any of the
options -V, -v, --version, or --help were specified, and with the status of groff otherwise.
Files
/usr/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/tty-char.tmac
defines fallback definitions of roff special characters. These definitions more poorly optically
approximate typeset output than those of tty.tmac in favor of communicating semantic information.
nroff loads it automatically.
Name
nroff - format documents with groff for TTY (terminal) devices
Notes
Pager programs like more(1) and less(1) may require command-line options to correctly handle some output
sequences; see grotty(1).
See Also
groff(1), troff(1), grotty(1), locale(1), roff(7) groff 1.23.0 26 December 2024 nroff(1)
Synopsis
nroff [-bcCEhikpRStUVz] [-dctext] [-dstring=text] [-Kfallback-encoding] [-mmacro-package] [-Mmacro-directory] [-npage-number] [-opage-list] [-Ppostprocessor-argument] [-rcnumeric-expression]
[-rregister=numeric-expression] [-Toutput-device] [-wwarning-category] [-Wwarning-category]
[file ...]
nroff--helpnroff-vnroff--version