1 This file describes recent user-visible changes in groff. Bug fixes
2 are not described. There are more details in the man pages.
7 To support platforms with 8+3 filenames, `-mFOO' will now search first for
8 tmac.FOO and then for FOO.tmac. Additionally, some macro files have been
9 renamed using the latter scheme to avoid 8+3 name clashes.
14 A new request `nop' (no operation) has been added which is similar to
27 Two new requests `tm1' and `tmc' have been added to improve writing messages
28 to the terminal. `tm1' is similar to `tm' but allows leading whitespace.
29 `tmc' is similar to `tm1' but doesn't emit a final newline.
31 A new request `dei' (define indirect) has been added. The first and second
32 parameter of `dei' are taken from string registers instead directly; this
33 very special request is needed to make `tmac.trace' independent from the
34 escape character (which might even be disabled).
36 It is now possible to save and restore the escape character with two new
37 requests `ecs' and `ecr'.
39 The new escape sequence \B'...' is an analogon to `\A': If the string within
40 the delimiters is a valid numeric expression, return character `1', and `0'
46 A new option `-P' resp. a new environment variable `GROPS_PROLOGUE' has been
47 added to select a different prologue file.
52 For security reasons the following changes have been done:
54 . The tmac.safer file has been replaced with a built-in solution;
55 .open, .opena, .pso, .sy, and .pi are completely disabled in
56 safer mode (which is the default); to use these requests the `-U'
57 command line flag must be used.
62 Bug fixes only; no user-visible changes.
70 The anachronism of calling the man macro package with `-man' has been fixed;
71 now you can say `-m man' also. The same is true for `ms', `me', `markup',
74 A new switch `-g' for calling `grn' is available.
76 A new switch `-G' for calling `grap' is available.
78 EBCDIC support for tty devices has been added. On such hosts, IBM code page
79 1047 is available with -Tcp1047 instead of -Tascii and -Tlatin1 (and, for
80 the moment, -Tutf8). Note that non-tty devices are not yet supported (but
86 A new command line option to the `man' macros is available: `-rSxx' (with
87 `xx' either 10, 11, or 12) to set the base document font size to `xx'
88 points. Additionally, `.SH' now produces larger headings than `.SS'.
90 To solve a problem with the .PSPIC macro which needs the `-U' switch of
91 troff to access an external program (psbb), a new request .psbb is now
92 available to get the bounding box of a PostScript image file. The values
93 (in PostScript units) are returned in the new read-only number registers
94 `llx', `lly', `urx', and `ury'. Consequently, .PSPIC has been adapted to
95 use the new request, and the psbb program has been removed.
97 A new predefined writable number register, `year', has been added. It
98 contains the current year.
100 A new read-only register, `.Y', has been added. It contains the revision
101 number of the groff package.
103 `\fP' now behaves as expected in situations like the following where the
104 font `foo' is undefined:
107 normal text \f[foo]bar\fP normal text
109 Previously, the text after \fP appeared as bold.
111 The `substring' request is not new, but hasn't been documented before.
113 The predefined `.T' string register (which holds the current output device)
114 is not new, but hasn't been documented before.
116 A new request `length' computes the length of a string and returns it in
119 The macro files `tmac.a4' (for specifying A4 paper format) and `tmac.trace'
120 (a debugging aid) are now installed also.
122 A new resource file, `troffrc-end', is now available. It is invoked after
123 all user-specified macros. Currently used by the html device to include
124 tmac.html; thus no need for users to specify -mhtml anymore.
126 The soft hyphen character now has a glyph name: `shc'.
128 The latin-1 character 173 (PS name `periodcentered') has got the troff glyph
129 name `pc' and is no longer intermixed with the symbol character `md' (PS
132 ASCII character 34 (PS name `quotedbl') has got the troff glyph name `dq'
133 (which is an alias to character `"').
135 ASCII character 39 (PS name `quoteright') has got the troff glyph name `cq'
136 (which is an alias to character "'").
138 Some additions to the font description files have been implemented for
139 better support of HTML output:
141 The new format of lines in the `charset' subsection of font description
144 name metrics type code [entity_name] [-- comment]
146 Currently, only the font description files in devhtml use the optional
147 entity_name string to define glyph entities in HTML. Everything after the
148 entity_name field is ignored; in case this field isn't used, two hyphen
149 characters are now necessary to start a comment.
151 Two new requests are available in DESC files (currently used only with
154 use_charnames_in_special
155 This command indicates that troff should encode named characters
156 inside special commands.
159 requests that troff tells the driver the source file name being
160 processed. This is achieved by another tcommand: `F filename'.
165 Bruno Haible <haible@clisp.cons.org> contributed support for UTF8 output.
170 Added .LINE macro to tmac.arkup.
172 The obsolete `.LINK' macro has been removed.
174 .URL, .FTP, and .MAILTO macros now accept an optional third argument which
175 will be immediately appended to the second argument (to be used with
176 punctuation, for example).
181 The font size 11pt has been changed to 10.95pt (as used in LaTeX 2e).
183 A new font file CWI (using cmitt10; this is typewriter italic) has been
189 A new driver for Canon CAPSL printers (LBP-4 and LBP-8 series laser
190 printers). This code has been contributed by Francisco Andres Verdu
191 <pandres@dragonet.es>.
196 A new preprocessor to process gremlin pictures. It is based on the
197 original Berkeley implementation of grn, written by David Slattengren
198 and Barry Roitblat, and has been adapted to groff by Daniel Senderowicz
199 <daniel@synchrods.com> and Werner Lemberg <wl@gnu.org>.
204 Added the `srand' command to set the seed for a new sequence of
205 pseudo-random numbers to be returned by `rand'.
210 Simplified installation: The Imakefile will now be configured (by groff's
216 Three new man pages are available: groff_tmac.5 (documenting how troff macros
217 are accessed and where they are found), groff.7 (a short reference of the GNU
218 roff language), and roff.7 (a general survey on GNU troff).
223 A port to win32 (for use with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0) is now part of the
224 distribution. It has been contributed by Blake McBride
225 <blake@florida-software.com>.
227 More information about programs, macros, documentation, etc., which is
228 related to groff has been collected in the file `MORE.STUFF'.
230 VERSION 1.13, 1.14, 1.15
231 ========================
233 Bug fixes only; no user-visible changes.
238 Finally, there are new maintainers for groff. Mailing lists and a CVS
239 repository are available also. See the file README for details. Not
240 all reported bug could be fixed, so please send mails again if
241 something is still not working.
243 Most of the installation problems should have vanished now (most
244 notably the $(tmac_wrap) bug).
246 There is now a man page called groff_man.man which documents the
247 basics of the -man macros. It has been originally written by Susan
248 G. Kleinmann <sgk@debian.org>.
250 A (still incomplete) groff reference manual in texinfo format
251 originally contributed by Trent A. Fisher <trent@gnurd.portland.or.us>.
253 me.man and msafer.man have been renamed to groff_me.man
254 resp. groff_msafer.man for consistency.
256 Default strings for macros in doc-common resp. tmac.an no longer
257 contain the word `UNIX'.
259 groff should now be Y2k safe (fixes contributed by Paul Eggert
260 <eggert@twinsun.com>).
262 Following the GNU standards, groff will now use the prefix
263 `/usr/local/' as the default instead of replacing an existent groff
266 groff, troff, nroff, and pic now support the -U flag to activate unsafe
267 behaviour (without -msafer); the -S flag for using the -msafer macros
273 This is a new output device for producing HTML output contributed by
274 Gaius Mulley <gaius@glam.ac.uk>. It is still very alpha but has been
275 included into the distribution so that a lot of people have a chance
276 to test it. Bug reports are highly welcome.
281 Duplex printing support has been contributed by Jeffrey Copeland
287 Added -I option for defining include paths (patch contributed by Peter
288 Miller <peterm@jna.com.au>).
293 Fallback resources added (patch contributed by Larry Jones
294 <larry.jones@sdrc.com>).
296 Will now support 8 gray levels.
301 New version 1.32 (contributed by Joergen Haegg <jh@axis.com>).
306 Complete documentation for pic is now in the file doc/pic.ms. It was
307 contributed by Eric S. Raymond, <esr@thyrsus.com>, who is emphatically
308 *not* volunteering to take over groff as he is way overworked with
309 half a dozen other projects.
314 The directory where data files are installed has been changed from
315 /usr/local/lib/groff to /usr/local/share/groff to comply with the
316 latest GNU coding standards.
318 By default groff programs with Unix equivalents are installed with a
319 "g" prefix unless there is an existing (non-groff) troff installation.
321 A new approach is used to make system macro packages available to
322 groff. Instead of simply including /usr/lib/tmac in the list of
323 directories searched by groff, the installation process creates for
324 each system macro package a wrapper macro package in the groff macro
325 directory that references the system macro package. The groff macro
326 packages are now installed with a leading "g" prefix if there is a
327 system version of the same macro package, and otherwise without the
328 "g" prefix, with the exception that the groff version of -me which is
329 always installed as -me.
331 There is a new device, lj4, for the HP LaserJet 4 (and PCL5
337 groff has a -S option that prevents the use of unsafe features in pic
338 and troff. This uses a new -S option of pic and the -msafer macros
344 The `blm' request specifies a macro to be invoked when a blank line is
350 A -S (safer) option disables the sh command.
355 The -m option enables manual feed.
360 \(rn will now produce a character that has the traditional metrics,
361 and will form corners with \(ul and \(br. This means that it will not
362 align properly with \(sr. Instead there's a new character
363 \[radicalex] which aligns with \(sr; this is used by eqn for doing
369 The `pso' request allows you to read from the standard output of a
375 The PSPIC macro has options to allow the horizontal alignment of the
376 graphic to be specified.
384 The escape sequence \V[xxx] will interpolate the value of the
385 environment variable xxx.
390 The decimalpoint option can be used to specify the character to be
391 recognized as the decimal point character in place of the default
400 The environment variable GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX can be used to control
401 whether groff looks for `gtroff' or `troff' (similarily for the
407 Multilingual hyphenation is supported by new `hpf' and `hla' requests,
408 and by a `\n[.hla]' number register. The -H option has been removed.
409 Files of hyphenation patterns can have comments.
411 When a font cannot be found, troff gives a warning (of type `font',
412 enabled by default) instead of an error.
414 There's a new request `trnt' that's like `tr' except that it doesn't
415 apply to text transparently throughput into a diversion with \!.
420 There is a `nokeep' option which tells tbl not to use diversions to
421 try to keep the table on one page.
426 Setting the parameter `nroff' to a non-zero value causes `ndefine' to
427 behave like `define' and `tdefine' to be ignored. This is done by
428 eqnrc when the current device is ascii or latin1. There's a `neqn'
429 script that just does `eqn -Tascii'.
434 grotty uses whatever page length was specified using the `pl' request
435 rather than using the paperlength command in the DESC file. The
436 paperwidth command in the DESC file is also ignored.
441 The programs in groff that have Unix counterparts can now be installed
442 without a leading `g' prefix. See the `g' variable in the Makefile.
444 The g?nroff script simulates the nroff command using groff.
446 New special characters \(+h, \(+f, \(+p, \(Fn, \(Bq, \(bq, \(aq, \(lz,
447 \(an. See groff_char(7).
449 ^L is now a legal input character.
454 The Xps pseudo-device has disappeared. Instead there is a new -X
455 option that tells groff to use gxditview instead of the usual
456 postprocessor. (So instead of -TXps, use -XTps or just -X if your
457 default device is ps.)
459 The postprocessor to be used for a particular device is now specified
460 by a `postpro' command in the DESC file rather than being compiled
461 into groff. Similarly the command to be used for printing (with the
462 -l option) is now specified by a `print' command in the DESC file.
464 The groff command no longer specifies eqnchar as an input file for
465 eqn. Instead eqn automatically loads a file `eqnrc'. The groff
466 command no longer passes the -D option to eqn. Instead eqnrc sets the
467 draw_lines parameter.
469 The groff command no longer tells troff to load a device-specific
470 macro file. This is handled instead by the `troffrc' file, which is
471 always loaded by troff.
473 The shell script version of groff has been removed.
478 The `rchar' request removes a character definition established with `char'.
480 Compatibility mode is disabled and the escape character is set to `\'
481 while a character definition is being processed.
483 The `\#' escape sequence is like `\"' except that the terminating
486 The `shc' request tells troff which character to insert (instead of
487 the default \(hy) when a word is hyphenated at a line break.
489 A font name of 0 (zero) in the DESC file will cause no font to be
490 mounted on the corresponding font position. This is useful for
491 arranging that special fonts are mounted on positions on which users
492 are not likely explicitly to mount fonts. All groff devices now avoid
493 initially mounting fonts on positions 5-9.
495 The `do' request allows a single request or macro to be interpreted
496 with compatibility mode disabled.
498 troff automatically loads a file `troffrc' before any other input file.
499 This can be prevented with the -R option. This file is responsible
500 for loading the device-specific macros.
505 The -x option has been removed and a -n option has been added. By
506 default, pic now assumes that the postprocessor supports groff
507 extensions. The -n option tells pic to generate output that works
508 with ditroff drivers. The -z option now applies only to TeX mode.
510 The -p option has been removed. Instead if the -n option is not
511 specified, pic generates output that uses \X'ps: ...' if the \n(0p
512 register is non-zero and tmac.ps sets this register to 1.
514 In places where you could 1st or 5th you can now say `i'th or `i+1'th
515 (the quotes are required).
520 Eqn now automatically reads a file `eqnrc' from the macro directory.
521 This performs the same role that the eqnchar files used to. This can
522 be prevented by the -R option.
524 Setting the draw_lines parameter to a non-zero value causes lines to
525 be drawn using \D rather than \l. The -D option is now obsolete.
527 `uparrow', `downarrow' and `updownarrow' can be used with `left' and
530 The amount of extra space added before and after lines containing
531 equations can be controlled using the `body_height' and `body_depth'
537 Font description files have been regenerated from newer AFM files.
538 You can get access to the additional characters present in the text
539 fonts in newer PostScript printers by using -mpsnew.
541 The default value of the -b option is specified by a `broken' command
544 With the -g option, grops will generate PostScript code that guesses
545 the page height. This allows documents to be printed on both letter
546 (8.5x11) and A4 paper without change.
551 ISO Latin-1 characters are available with -Tdvi. Format groff_char(7)
552 with groff -Tdvi for more information.
557 The -mtty-char macros contain additional character definitions for
563 In previous releases the groff -me macros treated the $r and $R number
564 registers in a way that was incompatible with the BSD -me macros. The
565 reason for this was that the approach used by the BSD -me macros does
566 not work with low resolution devices such as -TX75 and -TX100.
567 However, this caused problems with existing -me documents. In this
568 release, the vertical spacing is controlled by the $v and $V registers
569 which have the same meaning as $r and $R in earlier groff releases.
570 In addition, if the $r or $R register is set to a value that would be
571 correct for for the BSD -me macros and a low resolution device is not
572 being used, then an appropriate value for the $v or $V register will
573 be derived from the $r or $R register.
575 The groff -me macros work with -C and (I think) with Unix troff.
577 For backward compatibility with BSD -me, the \*{ and \*} strings are
578 also available as \*[ and \*]. Of course, \*[ will only be usable
581 The \*T string has been deleted. Use \*(Tm instead.
586 The `n', Space and Return keys are bound to the Next Page action. The
587 `p', BackSpace and Delete keys are bound to the Previous Page action.
588 The `q' key is bound to the Quit action.
590 The `r' key is bound to a rerasterize action that reruns groff, and
591 redisplays the current page.
599 There is a alternative assignment operator `:=' which interacts
600 differently with blocks.
602 There is a new command `command', which allows the values of variables
603 to be passed through to troff or TeX.
605 The `print' command now accepts multiple arguments.
607 String comparison expressions (using `==' or `!=') are allowed in more
613 Horizontal and vertical lines drawn with \D'l ...' will be rendered
614 using -, | and + characters. This is intended to give reasonable
615 results with boxed tables. It won't work well with pic.
620 The -mdoc macros have been upgraded to the version in the second
621 Berkeley networking release. This version is not completely
622 compatible with earlier versions; the old version is still available
623 as -mdoc.old. The grog script has been enhanced so that it can
624 usually determine whether a document requires the old or new versions.
626 With -TX75, -TX100 and -TXps, the PSPIC macro will produce a box
627 around where the picture would appear with -Tps.
632 An implementation of the -mm macros is included.
634 The directory in which temporary files are created can be controlled
635 by setting the GROFF_TMPDIR or TMPDIR environment variables.
640 Some MS-DOS support (see pic/make-dos-dist).
645 There are two new \X commands (\X'ps: invis' and \X'ps: endinvis')
646 which make it possible to have substitute characters that are
647 displayed when previewing with -TXps but ignored when printing with
653 Support for scalable fonts.
658 No changes other than bug fixes.
663 There is an implementation of refer and associated programs. groff -R
664 preprocesses with grefer; no mechanism is provided for passing
665 arguments to grefer because most grefer options have equivalent
666 commands which can be included in the file. grog also supports refer.
668 There is an alternative perl implementation of the grog script.
670 The code field in lines in the charset section of font description
671 files is now allowed to contain an arbitrary integer (previously it
672 was required to lie between 0 and 255). Currently grops and grodvi
673 use only the low order 8 bits of the value. Grodvi will use the
674 complete value; however, this is unlikely to be useful with
675 traditional TeX tools (.tfm files only allow 8 bit character codes.)
677 Left and right double quotes can be obtained with \(lq and \(rq
680 There is a new program called pfbtops which translates PostScript
681 fonts in pfb format to ASCII.
683 A slightly modified version of the Berkeley tmac.doc is included.
688 In long escape names the closing ] is now required to be at the same
689 input level as the opening [.
691 The \A'S' escape sequence returns 1 or 0 according as S is or is not
692 suitable for use as a name.
694 \~ produces an unbreakable space that can be stretched when the line
697 The `mso' request is like the `so' request except that it searches for
698 the file in the same directories in which tmac.X is searched for when
699 the -mX option is given.
701 The escape sequence `\R' is similar to the `nr' request.
706 A new `special' primitive allows you to add new types of unary
707 constructs by writing a troff macro.
712 The implementation no longer uses gperf.
717 The compile-time -DBROKEN_SPOOLER option has been replaced by a
718 BROKEN_SPOOLER_FLAGS option. This allows more precise control over
719 how grops should workaround broken spoolers and previewers. There is
720 a new -b option that can change this at run-time.
722 Grops now generates PostScript that complies with version 3.0 of the
723 Document Structuring Convention.
725 The resource management component of grops (the part that deals with
726 imported documents and downloadable fonts) has been rewritten and now
727 supports version 3.0 of the Document Structuring Conventions. The
728 %%DocumentFonts comment is no longer supported; you must use the
729 %%Document{Needed,Supplied}{Fonts,Resources} comments instead
732 tmac.psatk contains some macros that support the mechanism used by the
733 Andrew Toolkit for including PostScript graphics in troff documents.
738 Parts of xditview have been rewritten so that it can be used with the
739 output of gtroff -Tps. groff -TXps will run gtroff -Tps with
742 There is a new menu entry `Print' which brings up a dialog box for
743 specifying a command with which the file being previewed should be
746 Xditview now uses imake.
751 The groff command now understands the gtroff `-a' and `-i' options.
753 With the `m' and `n' scale indicators, the scale factor is rounded
754 horizontally before being applied. This makes (almost) no difference
755 for devices with `hor' equal to 1, but it makes groff with -Tascii or
756 -Tlatin1 behave more like nroff in its treatment of these scale
757 indicators. Accordingly tmac.tty now calls the `nroff' request so
758 that the `n' condition will be true.
760 The device-specific macros (tmac.ps, tmac.dvi, tmac.tty and tmac.X)
761 have been made to work at least somewhat with -C. In particular the
762 special characters defined by these macros now work with -C.
764 groff -Tdvi -p will now pass pic the -x flag; this will enable filling
765 of arrowheads and boxes, provided that your dvi driver supports the
766 latest version of the tpic specials.
771 There is a new `-N' option that tells eqn not to allow newlines in
772 delimiters. This allows eqn to recover better from missing closing
773 delimiters. The groff command will pass on a `-N' option to eqn.
778 You can now use psfig with grops. See the file ps/psfig.diff. I do
779 not recommend using psfig for new documents.
781 The command \X'ps: file F' is similar to \X'ps: exec ...' except that
782 the PostScript code is read from the file F instead of being contained
783 within the \X command. This was added to support psfig.
788 There are font files HB and HI corresponding to cmsssbx10 and cmssi10.
793 The groff -me macros now work with the -C option. As a result, they
794 may also work with Unix nroff/troff.
796 In -me, the $r and $R number registers now contain the line spacing as
797 a percentage of the pointsize expressed in units (normally about 120).
798 The previous definition was useless with low resolution devices such
804 A -ms-like macro-package is now included.
806 The name for the Icelandic lowercase eth character has been changed
812 There is a new request `nroff', which makes the `n' built-in condition
813 true and the `t' built-in condition false; also a new request `troff'
814 which undoes the effect of the `nroff' request. This is intended only
815 for backward compatibility: it is usually better to test \n(.H or
816 \n(.V or to use the `c' built-in condition.
818 The \R escape sequence has been deleted. Use \E instead.
820 There are `break' and `continue' requests for use with the `while'
823 There is a request `hym' that can ensure that when the current
824 adjustment mode is not `b' a line will not be hyphenated if it is no
825 more than a given amount short, and a request `hys' that can ensure
826 that when the current adjustment mode is `b' a line will not be
827 hyphenated if it can be justified by adding no more than a given
828 amount of extra space to each word space.
830 There is a request `rj' similar to `ce' that right justifies lines.
832 A warning of type `space' will be given when a call is made to an
833 undefined request or macro with a name longer than two characters, and
834 the first two characters of the name make a name that is defined.
835 This is intended to find places where a space has been omitted been a
836 request or macro and its argument. This type of warning is enabled by
842 A comma is permitted between the arguments to the `reset' command.
844 For use with TeX, there is a new `-c' option that makes gpic treat
845 lines beginning with `.' in a way that is more compatible with tpic
851 It is no longer necessary to add `space 0' at the beginning of
852 complicated equations inside pictures.
854 `prime' is now treated as an ordinary character, as in Unix eqn. The
855 previous behaviour of `prime' as an operator can now be obtained using
861 There are two new devices X75-12 and X100-12 which are the same as X75
862 and X100 except that they are optimized for documents that use mostly
868 The installation process has been refined to make it easy for you to
869 share groff with someone who has the same type of machine as you but
870 does not have a C++ compiler. See the end of the INSTALL file for
873 There is a man page for the tfmtodit program which explains how to use
874 your own fonts with groff -Tdvi.
876 There is a man page for afmtodit which explains how to use your own
877 PostScript fonts with groff -Tps.
879 The \N escape sequence is now fully supported. It can now be used to
880 access any character in a font by its output code, even if it doesn't
881 have a groff name. This is made possible by a convention in the font
882 files that a character name of `---' refers to an unnamed character.
883 The drivers now all support the `N' command required for this. The font
884 description files have been updated to include unnamed characters.
886 The `x' command in font description files has been removed: instead
887 any unknown commands are automatically made available to the drivers.
888 If you constructed your own font files with an earlier version of
889 tfmtodit or afmtodit, you must construct them again using the current
892 Characters between 0200 and 0237 octal are no longer legal input
893 characters. Note that these are not used in ISO 8859.
895 A command called `grog' has been added, similar to the `doctype'
896 command described in Kernighan and Pike.
901 The groff command has some new options: -V prints the pipeline
902 instead of executing it; -P passes an argument to the postprocessor,
903 -L passes an argument to the spooler.
905 There is a C++ implementation of the groff command. This handles some
906 things slightly better than the shell script. In particular, it can
907 correctly handle arguments containing characters that have a special
908 meaning to the shell; it can give an error message when child
909 processes other than the last in the pipeline terminate abnormally;
910 its exit status can take account of the exit statuses of all its child
911 processes; it is a little more efficient; when geqn is used, it
912 searches for the eqnchar file in the same way that font metric files
913 are searched for, rather than expecting to find it in one particular
919 There is font translation feature: For example, you can tell gtroff to
920 use font `HR' whenever font `H' is requested with the line
922 This would be useful for a document that uses `H' to refer to
925 There are some new number registers: `.kern' contains the current kern
926 mode, `.lg' the current ligature mode, `.x' the major version number,
927 `.y' the minor version number, `.ce' the number of lines to be
928 centered in the current environment, `.trunc' the amount of vertical
929 space truncated by the most recently sprung vertical position trap,
930 `.ne' the amount of vertical space needed in the last `ne' request
931 that caused a vertical position trap to be sprung.
933 The `cf' request now behaves sensibly in a diversion. If used in a
934 diversion, it will now arrange for the file to be copied to the output
935 when the diversion is reread.
937 There is a new request `trf' (transparent file) similar to `cf', but
940 There is a new escape sequence `\Y[xxx]', roughly equivalent to
941 `\X'\*[xxx]'', except that the contents of string or macro xxx are not
942 interpreted, and xxx may contain newlines. This requires an output
943 format extension; the drivers have been modified to understand this.
944 Grops has also been modified to cope with newlines in the arguments to
945 \X commands; grops has a new \X command mdef, which is like def except
946 that it has a first argument giving the number of definitions.
948 There is a new warning category `escape' which warns about unknown
951 The `fp' request now takes an optional third argument giving the external
954 The `\_' character is now automatically translated to `\(ul' as in troff.
956 The environment variable `GROFF_HYPHEN' gives the name of the file
957 containing the hyphenation patterns.
959 There is a `\C'xxx'' escape sequence equivalent to `\[xxx]'.
961 Characters ", ', ), ], *, \(dg are now initially transparent for the purposes
962 of end of sentence recognition.
964 There is an anti-recursion feature in the `char' request, so you can
965 say `.char \(bu \s+2\(bu\s-2'.
967 The limit on the number of font positions has been removed.
968 Accordingly `\n[.fp]' never returns 0.
970 The restriction on the number of numbered environments has been removed.
972 There is a new escape sequence `\E' that makes it possible to
973 guarantee that an escape sequence won't get interpreted in copy-mode.
974 The `\R' escape sequence is accordingly now deprecated.
979 Arguments of the form `X anything X' (in the `copy thru', `sh', `for',
980 `if' and `define' constructs) can now be of the form `{ anything }'.
982 If the `linethick' variable is negative (as it now is initially),
983 lines will be drawn with a thickness proportional to the current point
986 The `rand' function now takes no arguments and returns a number between
987 0 and 1. The old syntax is still supported.
989 `^' can be used in expressions to indicate exponentiation.
991 In the `for' construct the argument to the by clause can be prefixed
992 by `*' to indicate that the increment is multiplicative.
994 A bare expression may be used as an attribute. If the current
995 direction is `dir', then an attribute `expr' is equivalent to
998 There is a `sprintf' construct that allows numbers to be formatted and used
999 wherever a quoted string can be used.
1001 The height of a text object without an explicit height attribute is
1002 the number of text strings associated with the object times the value
1003 of the `textht' variable.
1005 The maximum height and width of a picture is controlled by the
1006 `maxpswid' and `maxpsht' variables.
1011 Gtbl can now handle gracefully the situation where the `ce' request
1012 has been applied to a table.
1017 The `ifdef' primitive has been generalized.
1019 A tilde accent can be put underneath a box using `utilde'. This
1020 defined using a general `uaccent' primitive.
1025 There is a new PostScript font downloading scheme which handles font
1026 downloading for imported illustrations. Previously, the name of the
1027 file containing the font was given in the `x download' line in the
1028 groff font metric file. Now, there is a `download' file which says
1029 for each PostScript font name which file contains that font. Grops
1030 can also now handle inter-font dependencies, where one downloadable
1031 font depends on some other (possibly downloadable) font.
1033 The `T' font has been removed. The characters it used to provide are
1034 now provided by `char' definitions in tmac.ps. TSymbol.ps has also
1035 been removed, and the tweaks it provided are now provided by `char'