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groff

Groff, short for GNU troff, is a free software typesetting system used primarily on Unix-like systems. It reads plain-text input containing formatting commands and produces formatted output in various devices and formats. As part of the GNU project, groff is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Groff implements the troff/nroff document formatter family. It originated from the troff tool developed at Bell

Macro packages include -man, -mdoc, -me, -mm, -ms, and -mom (modern macros). These provide conventions for formatting

Groff is widely used for producing manual pages and technical documents and remains standard in many GNU/Linux

See also: troff, nroff, roff, man page, mdoc, macro packages.

Labs
and
was
adapted
into
the
GNU
troff
to
provide
a
portable,
extensible,
and
free
implementation.
It
supports
a
wide
range
of
output
devices,
including
PostScript
and
PDF,
as
well
as
HTML
and
DVI,
through
device
drivers.
The
input
language
is
based
on
roff
requests
and
macro
packages,
which
allow
high-level
formatting
without
relying
on
a
word
processor.
manual
pages,
articles,
and
books.
Common
usage
patterns
include:
groff
-Tpdf
-mandoc
file
for
man-page
style
output,
groff
-Tps
-mandoc
file
for
PostScript,
or
groff
-Thtml
file
to
generate
HTML.
Preprocessors
such
as
eqn
and
tbl
extend
troff
with
mathematics
and
tables.
distributions.
It
continues
to
be
updated
and
maintained
as
part
of
the
GNU
project,
with
ongoing
development
to
improve
compatibility
with
modern
fonts
and
graphics.