%nroff

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 2 July 2023
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Name

nroff - format documents with groff for TTY (terminal) devices
          .nr d-fallback 1 
          .nr d-fallback 1   

Synopsis

[-bcCEhikpRStUVz] [-d~ctext] [-d~string=text] [-K~fallbac-encoding] [-m~macr-package] [-M~macr-directory] [-n~pag-number] [-o~pag-list] [-P~postprocesso-argument] [-r~cnumeri-expression] [-r~register=numeri-expression] [-T~outpu-device] [-w~warnin-category] [-W~warnin-category] [file~...] --help -v --version  

Description

nroff formats documents written in the language for typewrite-like devices such as terminal emulators. GNU nroff emulates the AT&T nroff command using nroff generates output via 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 comman-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 program, then checks several local-related environment variables; see section [lq]Environment[rq] 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 -c and -h imply [lq]-P-c[rq] and [lq]-P-h[rq], 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 -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.  

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.  

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 colo-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_ALL

LC_CTYPE LANG LESSCHARSET are patter-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.

 

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.

 

Notes

Pager programs like and may require comman-line options to correctly handle some output sequences; see  

See also

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Index

Name

Synopsis

Description

Exit status

Environment

Files

Notes

See also