groff_tmac - macro files in the roff typesetting system
The
roff(7) type-setting system provides a set of macro packages suitable
for special kinds of documents. Each macro package stores its macros and
definitions in a file called the package's
tmac file. The name is
deduced from ‘
TroffMACros’.
The tmac files are normal roff source documents, except that they usually
contain only definitions and setup commands, but no text. All tmac files are
kept in a single or a small number of directories, the
tmac
directories.
groff provides all classical macro packages, some more full packages, and
some secondary packages for special purposes. Note that it is not possible to
use multiple primary macro packages at the same time; saying e.g.
-
sh# groff -m man -m ms foo
or
-
sh# groff -m man foo -m ms bar
fails. Exception to this is the use of man pages written with either the
mdoc or the
man macro package. See below the description of the
andoc.tmac file.
- man
- This is the classical macro package for Unix manual pages
(man pages); it is quite handy and easy to use; see
groff_man(7).
- doc
-
mdoc An alternative macro package for
man pages mainly used in BSD systems; it provides many new
features, but it is not the standard for man pages; see
groff_mdoc(7).
- andoc
-
mandoc Use this file in case you don't know whether
the man macros or the mdoc package should be used. Multiple
man pages (in either format) can be handled.
The packages in this section provide a complete set of macros for writing
documents of any kind, up to whole books. They are similar in functionality;
it is a matter of taste which one to use.
- me
- The classical me macro package; see
groff_me(7).
- mm
- The semi-classical mm macro package; see
groff_mm(7).
- mom
- The new mom macro package, only available in groff.
As this is not based on other packages, it can be freely designed. So it
is expected to become quite a nice, modern macro package. See
groff_mom(7).
- ms
- The classical ms macro package; see
groff_ms(7).
- cs
- This file adds support for Czech localization, including
the main macro packages (me, mom, mm, and ms).
- Note that cs.tmac sets the input encoding to
latin-2.
- de
-
den German localization support, including the main
macro packages (me, mom, mm, and ms).
-
de.tmac selects hyphenation patterns for traditional
orthography, and den.tmac does the same for the new orthography
(‘Rechtschreibreform’). It should be used as the last macro
package on the command line.
- fr
- This file adds support for French localization, including
the main macro packages (me, mom, mm, and ms). Example:
-
sh# groff -ms -mfr foo.ms > foo.ps
- Note that fr.tmac sets the input encoding to latin-9
to get proper support of the ‘oe’ ligature.
- sv
- Swedish localization support, including the me, mom, and ms
macro packages. Note that Swedish for the mm macros is handled separately;
see groff_mmse(7) (only in Swedish locales). It should be used as
the last macro package on the command line.
- latin1
-
latin2 latin5 latin9 Various input
encodings supported directly by groff. Normally, this macro is loaded at
the very beginning of a document or specified as the first macro argument
on the command line. roff loads latin1 by default at start-up. Note
that these macro packages don't work on EBCDIC hosts.
- cp1047
- Encoding support for EBCDIC. On those platforms it is
loaded automatically at start-up. Due to different character ranges used
in roff it doesn't work on architectures which are based on
ASCII.
Note that it can happen that some input encoding characters are not available
for a particular output device. For example, saying
groff -Tlatin1 -mlatin9 ...
fails if you use the Euro character in the input. Usually, this limitation is
present only for devices which have a limited set of output glyphs
(
-Tascii,
-Tlatin1); for other devices it is usually sufficient
to install proper fonts which contain the necessary glyphs.
The macro packages in this section are not intended for stand-alone usage, but
can be used to add special functionality to any other macro package or to
plain groff.
- 62bit
- Provides macros for addition, multiplication, and division
of 62-bit integers (allowing safe multiplication of 31-bit integers, for
example).
- ec
- Switch to the EC and TC font families. To be used with
grodvi(1) – this man page also gives more details of how to
use it.
- hdtbl
- The Heidelberger table macros, contributed by Joachim
Walsdorff, allow the generation of tables through a syntax similar to the
HTML table model. Note that hdtbl is a macro package, not a
preprocessor like tbl(1). hdtbl works only with the
-Tps and -Tpdf output devices. See
groff_hdtbl(7).
- papersize
- This macro file is already loaded at start-up by
troff so it isn't necessary to call it explicitly. It provides an
interface to set the paper size on the command line with the option
-dpaper= size. Possible values for size are the same
as the predefined papersize values in the DESC file (only
lowercase; see groff_font(5) for more) except
a7–d7. An appended l (ell) character denotes
landscape orientation. Examples: a4, c3l,
letterl.
- Most output drivers need additional command-line switches
-p and -l to override the default paper length and
orientation as set in the driver-specific DESC file. For example, use the
following for PS output on A4 paper in landscape orientation:
-
sh# groff -Tps -dpaper=a4l -P-pa4 -P-l -ms foo.ms > foo.ps
- pdfpic
- A single macro is provided in this file, PSPIC, to
include a PDF graphic in a document, i.e., under the output device
-Tpdf. For all other devices, pspic is used. So
pdfpic is an extension of pspic. By that you can now even
replace all PSPIC by PDFPIC, nothing gets lost by that. The
options of PDFPIC are identical to the PSDIF options.
- pic
- This file provides proper definitions for the macros
PS and PE, needed for the pic(1) preprocessor. They
center each picture. Use it only if your macro package doesn't provide
proper definitions for those two macros (actually, most of them already
do).
- pspic
- A single macro is provided in this file, PSPIC, to
include a PostScript graphic in a document. The following output devices
support inclusion of PS images: -Tps, -Tdvi, -Thtml,
and -Txhtml; for all other devices the image is replaced with a
hollow rectangle of the same size. This macro file is already loaded at
start-up by troff so it isn't necessary to call it explicitly.
- Syntax:
-
.PSPIC
[-L|-R|-C|-I n] file
[width [height]]
-
file is the name of the PostScript file;
width and height give the desired width and height of the
image. If neither a width nor a height argument is
specified, the image's natural width (as given in the file's bounding box)
or the current line length is used as the width, whatever is smaller. The
width and height arguments may have scaling indicators
attached; the default scaling indicator is i. This macro
scales the graphic uniformly in the x and y directions so that it
is no more than width wide and height high. Option -C
centers the graphic horizontally, which is the default. The -L and
-R options cause the graphic to be left-aligned and right-aligned,
respectively. The -I option causes the graphic to be indented
by n (default scaling indicator is m).
- For use of .PSPIC within a diversion it is
recommended to extend it with the following code, assuring that the
diversion's width completely covers the image's width.
-
.am PSPIC
. vpt 0
\h'(\\n[ps-offset]u + \\n[ps-deswid]u)'
. sp -1
. vpt 1
..
- ptx
- A single macro is provided in this file, xx, for
formatting permuted index entries as produced by the GNU ptx(1)
program. In case you need a different formatting, copy the macro into your
document and adapt it to your needs.
- trace
- Use this for tracing macro calls. It is only useful for
debugging. See groff_trace(7).
- tty-char
- Overrides the definition of standard troff characters and
some groff characters for TTY devices. The optical appearance is
intentionally inferior compared to that of normal TTY formatting to allow
processing with critical equipment.
- www
- Additions of elements known from the HTML format, as used
in the internet (World Wide Web) pages; this includes URL links and mail
addresses; see groff_www(7).
Classical roff systems were designed before the conventions of the modern C
getopt(3) call evolved, and used a naming scheme for macro packages
that looks odd to modern eyes. Macro packages were always included with the
option
-m; when this option was directly followed by its argument
without an intervening space, this looked like a long option preceded by a
single minus — a sensation in the computer stone age. To make this
invocation form work, classical troff macro packages used names that started
with the letter ‘m’, which was omitted in the naming of the
macro file.
For example, the macro package for the man pages was called
man, while
its macro file
tmac.an. So it could be activated by the argument
an to option
-m, or
-man for short.
For similar reasons, macro packages that did not start with an ‘m’
had a leading ‘m’ added in the documentation and in speech; for
example, the package corresponding to
tmac.doc was called
mdoc
in the documentation, although a more suitable name would be
doc. For,
when omitting the space between the option and its argument, the command-line
option for activating this package reads
-mdoc.
To cope with all situations, actual versions of
groff(1) are smart about
both naming schemes by providing two macro files for the inflicted macro
packages; one with a leading ‘m’ the other one without it. So in
groff, the
man macro package may be specified as one of the
following four methods:
-
sh# groff -m man
sh# groff -man
sh# groff -mman
sh# groff -m an
Recent packages that do not start with ‘m’ do not use an
additional ‘m’ in the documentation. For example, the
www
macro package may be specified only as one of the two methods:
-
sh# groff -m www
sh# groff -mwww
Obviously, variants like
-mmwww would not make much sense.
A second strange feature of classical troff was to name macro files in the form
tmac.name. In modern operating systems, the type of a file is specified
as a postfix, the file name extension. Again, groff copes with this situation
by searching both
anything.tmac and
tmac.anything
if only
anything is specified.
The easiest way to find out which macro packages are available on a system is to
check the man page
groff(1), or the contents of the
tmac
directories.
In
groff, most macro packages are described in man pages called
groff_name(7), with a leading ‘m’ for the
classical packages.
There are several ways to use a macro package in a document. The classical way
is to specify the troff/groff option
-m name at run-time; this
makes the contents of the macro package
name available. In groff, the
file name
.tmac is searched within the tmac path; if not found,
tmac.name is searched for instead.
Alternatively, it is also possible to include a macro file by adding the request
.so filename into the document; the argument must be the full
file name of an existing file, possibly with the directory where it is kept.
In groff, this was improved by the similar request
.mso package,
which added searching in the tmac path, just like option
-m does.
Note that in order to resolve the
.so and
.mso requests, the roff
preprocessor
soelim(1) must be called if the files to be included need
preprocessing. This can be done either directly by a pipeline on the command
line or by using the troff/groff option
-s.
man calls soelim
automatically.
For example, suppose a macro file is stored as
- /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/macros.tmac
and is used in some document called
docu.roff.
At run-time, the formatter call for this is
-
sh# groff -m macros docu.roff
To include the macro file directly in the document either
-
.mso macros.tmac
is used or
-
.so /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/macros.tmac
In both cases, the formatter should be called with option
-s to invoke
soelim.
-
sh# groff -s docu.roff
If you want to write your own groff macro file, call it whatever
.tmac and
put it in a directory in the tmac path; see section “Files”
below. Then documents can include it with the
.mso request or the
option
-m.
A
roff(7) document is a text file that is enriched by predefined
formatting constructs, such as requests, escape sequences, strings, numeric
registers, and macros from a macro package. These elements are described in
roff(7).
To give a document a personal style, it is most useful to extend the existing
elements by defining some macros for repeating tasks; the best place for this
is near the beginning of the document or in a separate file.
Macros without arguments are just like strings. But the full power of macros
reveals when arguments are passed with a macro call. Within the macro
definition, the arguments are available as the escape sequences
\$1,
...,
\$9,
\$[...
],
\$*, and
\$@, the name
under which the macro was called is in
\$0, and the number of arguments
is in register
\n[.$]; see
groff(7).
The phase when groff reads a macro is called
copy-in mode or
copy
mode in roff-talk. This is comparable to the C preprocessing phase
during the development of a program written in the C language.
In this phase, groff interprets all backslashes; that means that all escape
sequences in the macro body are interpreted and replaced by their value. For
constant expressions, this is wanted, but strings and registers that might
change between calls of the macro must be protected from being evaluated. This
is most easily done by doubling the backslash that introduces the escape
sequence. This doubling is most important for the positional parameters. For
example, to print information on the arguments that were passed to the macro
to the terminal, define a macro named ‘.print_args’, say.
-
.ds midpart was called with
.de print_args
. tm \f[I]\\$0\f[] \*[midpart] \\n[.$] arguments:
. tm \\$*
..
When calling this macro by
-
.print_args arg1 arg2
the following text is printed to the terminal:
-
print_args was called with the following 2 arguments:
arg1 arg2
Let's analyze each backslash in the macro definition. As the positional
parameters and the number of arguments change with each call of the macro
their leading backslash must be doubled, which results in \\
$* and
\\
[.$]. The same applies to the macro name because it could be called
with an alias name, so \\
$0.
On the other hand,
midpart is a constant string, it does not change, so
no doubling for \
*[midpart]. The \
f escape sequences are
predefined groff elements for setting the font within the text. Of course,
this behavior does not change, so no doubling with \
f[I] and
\
f[].
Writing groff macros is easy when the escaping mechanism is temporarily
disabled. In groff, this is done by enclosing the macro definition(s) into a
pair of
.eo and
.ec requests. Then the body in the macro
definition is just like a normal part of the document — text enhanced
by calls of requests, macros, strings, registers, etc. For example, the code
above can be written in a simpler way by
-
.eo
.ds midpart was called with
.de print_args
. tm \f[I]\$0\f[] \*[midpart] \n[.$] arguments:
. tm \$*
..
.ec
Unfortunately, draft mode cannot be used universally. Although it is good enough
for defining normal macros, draft mode fails with advanced applications, such
as indirectly defined strings, registers, etc. An optimal way is to define and
test all macros in draft mode and then do the backslash doubling as a final
step; do not forget to remove the
.eo request.
- •
- Start every line with a dot, for example, by using the
groff request .nop for text lines, or write your own macro that
handles also text lines with a leading dot.
-
.de Text
. if (\\n[.$] == 0) \
. return
. nop \)\\$*\)
..
- •
- Write a comment macro that works both for copy-in and draft
mode; for as escaping is off in draft mode, trouble might occur when
normal comments are used. For example, the following macro just ignores
its arguments, so it acts like a comment line:
-
.de c
..
.c This is like a comment line.
- •
- In long macro definitions, make ample use of comment lines
or almost-empty lines (this is, lines which have a leading dot and nothing
else) for a better structuring.
- •
- To increase readability, use groff's indentation facility
for requests and macro calls (arbitrary whitespace after the leading
dot).
Diversions can be used to implement quite advanced programming constructs. They
are comparable to pointers to large data structures in the
C programming language, but their usage is quite different.
In their simplest form, diversions are multi-line strings, but they get their
power when diversions are used dynamically within macros. The (formatted)
information stored in a diversion can be retrieved by calling the diversion
just like a macro.
Most of the problems arising with diversions can be avoided if you remain aware
of the fact that diversions always store complete lines. If diversions are
used when the line buffer has not been flushed, strange results are produced;
not knowing this, many people get desperate about diversions. To ensure that a
diversion works, line breaks should be added at the right places. To be on the
secure side, enclose everything that has to do with diversions into a pair of
line breaks; for example, by explicitly using
.br requests. This rule
should be applied to diversion definition, both inside and outside, and to all
calls of diversions. This is a bit of overkill, but it works nicely.
[If you really need diversions which should ignore the current partial line, use
environments to save the current partial line and/or use the
.box
request.]
The most powerful feature using diversions is to start a diversion within a
macro definition and end it within another macro. Then everything between each
call of this macro pair is stored within the diversion and can be manipulated
from within the macros.
All macro package files must be named name
.tmac to fully use the tmac
mechanism.
tmac.name as with classical packages is possible as well,
but deprecated.
The macro files are kept in the
tmac directories; a colon separated list
of these constitutes the
tmac path.
The search sequence for macro files is (in that order):
- •
- the directories specified with troff/groff's -M
command-line option
- •
- the directories given in the GROFF_TMAC_PATH
environment variable
- •
- the current directory (only if in unsafe mode, which is
enabled by the -U command-line switch)
- •
- the home directory
- •
- a platform-specific directory, being
- in this installation
- •
- a site-specific (platform-independent) directory,
being
- /usr/share/groff/site-tmac
- in this installation
- •
- the main tmac directory, being
- /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac
- in this installation
- GROFF_TMAC_PATH
- A colon separated list of additional tmac directories in
which to search for macro files. See the previous section for a detailed
description.
This document was written by
Bernd
Warken and
Werner
Lemberg
Groff: The GNU Implementation of troff, by Trent A. Fisher and Werner
Lemberg, is the primary
groff manual. You can browse it interactively
with “info groff”.
-
groff(1)
- an overview of the groff system.
-
groff_man(7),
-
groff_mdoc(7), groff_me(7),
groff_mm(7), groff_mom(7), groff_ms(7),
groff_trace(7), groff_www(7). the groff tmac macro
packages.
-
groff(7)
- the groff language.
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard is available at the
FHS web
site