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Groff (software)

Unix typesetting software used for man pages

Unix typesetting software used for man pages

FieldValue
logoOfficial gnu.svgclass=skin-invert
namegroff
authorJames Clark
developerGNU Project
released
latest release version
latest release date
latest preview version
latest preview date
programming languageC++
genreTypesetting
license2009: GPL-3.0-or-later
1992: GPL-2.0-or-later
1990: GPL-1.0-or-later
website

1992: GPL-2.0-or-later 1990: GPL-1.0-or-later

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 replacement for the troff and nroff text formatters, which were both developed from the original roff.

Groff contains a large number of helper programs, preprocessors, and postprocessors including eqn, tbl, 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 derived operating systems such as Linux and 4.4BSD derivatives — notably because troff macros are used to create man pages, 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, as has macOS Ventura.

History

groff is an original implementation written primarily in C++ by James Clark and is modeled after ditroff, 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 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 UNIX systems. In 1999, Werner Lemberg and Ted Harding took over maintenance of groff.

Notes

References

References

  1. "1.20: Update GPL2 to GPL3.".
  2. "1.06: ChangeLog".
  3. "1.02: groff.c".
  4. Laha, Manas. (17 June 2003). "An Introduction to the GNU Groff Text Processing System".
  5. "GNU troff (Groff) — a GNU project".
  6. [http://www.openbsd.org/plus49.html Changes made between OpenBSD 4.8 and 4.9]
  7. [http://www.fitug.de/debate/9905/msg00325.html FFII-Nachrichten 1999 Woche 20].
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This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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