3 The `groffer' program is the easiest way to read documents written in
4 some `roff' language, such as the `man pages', the manual pages in
5 many operating systems.
10 Input comes from either standard input or command line parameters that
11 represent names of exisiting roff files or standardized specifications
12 for searching man pages. All of these can be compressed in a format
13 that is decompressible by `gzip', including `.gz', `bz2', and `.Z'.
15 `groffer' has many built-in `man' functionalities to find and read the
16 manual pages on UNIX and similar operating systems. It accepts the
17 information from an installed `man' program, but tries to find a man
20 `groffer' bundles all filespec parameters into a single output file in
21 the same way as `groff'. The disadvantage of this is that all file
22 name arguments must use the same groff language. To change this, the
23 option parsing must be revised for large parts. It seems that this
24 would create incompatibilities, so the actual option strategy is kept.
29 All input is first sent to `grog' to determine the necessary groff
30 options and then to `groff'. So no special `groff' arguments must be
31 given. But all `groff' options can be specified when this seems to be
34 The following displaying modes for the output are available:
35 - Display formatted input with
36 -- the X roff viewer `gxditview',
37 -- a Prostcript viewer,
41 -- a pager in a text terminal (tty).
42 - Generate groff output on stdout without a viewer.
43 - Generate the troff intermediate output on standard output without
45 - Output the source code without any groff processing.
46 By default, the program tries to display with `gxditview' as graphical
47 device in X; on non-X text terminals, the `tty' text mode with a pager
53 `groffer' is a shell script. It should run on any POSIX or Bourne
54 style shell that supports shell functions with local variables.
59 For reporting bugs of `groffer', groff's free mailing list
60 <bug-groff@gnu.org> can be used. For a general discussion, the
61 mailing list <groff@gnu.org> is more useful; see the `README' file in
62 the top directory of the `groff' source package for more details on
68 Copyright (C) 2003,2004,2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
69 Written by Bernd Warken
71 This file is part of groffer, which is part of groff.
73 groff is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
74 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
75 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
78 groff is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
79 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
80 or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
81 License for more details.
83 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
84 along with groff; see the files COPYING and LICENSE in the top
85 directory of the groff source. If not, write to the Free Software
86 Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.