grops
GROPS(1) GROPS(1)
NAME
grops - PostScript driver for groff
SYNOPSIS
grops [ -glmv ] [ -bn ] [ -cn ] [ -Fdir ] [ -ppapersize ]
[ -Pprologue ] [ -wn ] [ files... ]
It is possible to have whitespace between a command line option and
its parameter.
DESCRIPTION
grops translates the output of GNU troff to PostScript. Normally
grops should be invoked by using the groff command with a -Tps option.
(Actually, this is the default for groff.) If no files are given,
grops will read the standard input. A filename of - will also cause
grops to read the standard input. PostScript output is written to the
standard output. When grops is run by groff options can be passed to
grops using the groff -P option.
OPTIONS
-bn Workaround broken spoolers and previewers. Normally grops pro-
duces output that conforms the Document Structuring Conventions
version 3.0. Unfortunately some spoolers and previewers can’t
handle such output. The value of n controls what grops does to
its output acceptable to such programs. A value of 0 will
cause grops not to employ any workarounds. Add 1 if no
%%BeginDocumentSetup and %%EndDocumentSetup comments should be
generated; this is needed for early versions of TranScript that
get confused by anything between the %%EndProlog comment and
the first %%Page comment. Add 2 if lines in included files
beginning with %! should be stripped out; this is needed for
Sun’s pageview previewer. Add 4 if %%Page, %%Trailer and
%%EndProlog comments should be stripped out of included files;
this is needed for spoolers that don’t understand the %%Begin-
Document and %%EndDocument comments. Add 8 if the first line
of the PostScript output should be %!PS-Adobe-2.0 rather than
%!PS-Adobe-3.0; this is needed when using Sun’s Newsprint with
a printer that requires page reversal. The default value can
be specified by a
broken n
command in the DESC file. Otherwise the default value is 0.
-cn Print n copies of each page.
-Fdir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for prologue,
font, and device description files; name is the name of the
device, usually ps.
-g Guess the page length. This generates PostScript code that
guesses the page length. The guess will be correct only if the
imageable area is vertically centered on the page. This option
allows you to generate documents that can be printed both on
letter (8.5×11) paper and on A4 paper without change.
-l Print the document in landscape format.
-m Turn manual feed on for the document.
-ppaper-size
Set physical dimension of output medium. This overrides the
papersize and paperlength commands in the DESC file; it accepts
the same arguments as the papersize command.
-Pprologue-file
Use the file prologue-file (in the font path) as the prologue
instead of the default prologue file prologue. This option
overrides the environment variable GROPS_PROLOGUE.
-wn Lines should be drawn using a thickness of n thousandths of an
em. If this option is not given, the line thickness defaults
to 0.04 em.
-v Print the version number.
USAGE
There are styles called R, I, B, and BI mounted at font positions 1
to 4. The fonts are grouped into families A, BM, C, H, HN, N, P and T
having members in each of these styles:
AR AvantGarde-Book
AI AvantGarde-BookOblique
AB AvantGarde-Demi
ABI AvantGarde-DemiOblique
BMR Bookman-Light
BMI Bookman-LightItalic
BMB Bookman-Demi
BMBI Bookman-DemiItalic
CR Courier
CI Courier-Oblique
CB Courier-Bold
CBI Courier-BoldOblique
HR Helvetica
HI Helvetica-Oblique
HB Helvetica-Bold
HBI Helvetica-BoldOblique
HNR Helvetica-Narrow
HNI Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique
HNB Helvetica-Narrow-Bold
HNBI Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique
NR NewCenturySchlbk-Roman
NI NewCenturySchlbk-Italic
NB NewCenturySchlbk-Bold
NBI NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic
PR Palatino-Roman
PI Palatino-Italic
PB Palatino-Bold
PBI Palatino-BoldItalic
TR Times-Roman
TI Times-Italic
TB Times-Bold
TBI Times-BoldItalic
There is also the following font which is not a member of a family:
ZCMI ZapfChancery-MediumItalic
There are also some special fonts called SS and S. Zapf Dingbats is
available as ZD and a reversed version of ZapfDingbats (with symbols
pointing in the opposite direction) is available as ZDR; most charac-
ters in these fonts are unnamed and must be accessed using \N.
The default color for \m and \M is black; for colors defined in the
‘rgb’ color space, setrgbcolor is used, for ‘cmy’ and ‘cmyk’ setcmyk-
color, and for ‘gray’ setgray.
grops understands various X commands produced using the \X escape
sequence; grops will only interpret commands that begin with a ps:
tag.
\X’ps: exec code’
This executes the arbitrary PostScript commands in code. The
PostScript currentpoint will be set to the position of the \X
command before executing code. The origin will be at the top
left corner of the page, and y coordinates will increase down
the page. A procedure u will be defined that converts groff
units to the coordinate system in effect. For example,
.nr x 1i
\X’ps: exec \nx u 0 rlineto stroke’
will draw a horizontal line one inch long. code may make
changes to the graphics state, but any changes will persist
only to the end of the page. A dictionary containing the defi-
nitions specified by the def and mdef will be on top of the
dictionary stack. If your code adds definitions to this dic-
tionary, you should allocate space for them using
\X’ps mdef n’. Any definitions will persist only until the end
of the page. If you use the \Y escape sequence with an argu-
ment that names a macro, code can extend over multiple lines.
For example,
.nr x 1i
.de y
ps: exec
\nx u 0 rlineto
stroke
..
\Yy
is another way to draw a horizontal line one inch long.
\X’ps: file name’
This is the same as the exec command except that the PostScript
code is read from file name.
\X’ps: def code’
Place a PostScript definition contained in code in the pro-
logue. There should be at most one definition per \X command.
Long definitions can be split over several \X commands; all the
code arguments are simply joined together separated by new-
lines. The definitions are placed in a dictionary which is
automatically pushed on the dictionary stack when an exec com-
mand is executed. If you use the \Y escape sequence with an
argument that names a macro, code can extend over multiple
lines.
\X’ps: mdef n code’
Like def, except that code may contain up to n definitions.
grops needs to know how many definitions code contains so that
it can create an appropriately sized PostScript dictionary to
contain them.
\X’ps: import file llx lly urx ury width [ height ]’
Import a PostScript graphic from file. The arguments llx, lly,
urx, and ury give the bounding box of the graphic in the
default PostScript coordinate system; they should all be inte-
gers; llx and lly are the x and y coordinates of the lower left
corner of the graphic; urx and ury are the x and y coordinates
of the upper right corner of the graphic; width and height are
integers that give the desired width and height in groff units
of the graphic. The graphic will be scaled so that it has this
width and height and translated so that the lower left corner
of the graphic is located at the position associated with \X
command. If the height argument is omitted it will be scaled
uniformly in the x and y directions so that it has the speci-
fied width. Note that the contents of the \X command are not
interpreted by troff; so vertical space for the graphic is not
automatically added, and the width and height arguments are not
allowed to have attached scaling indicators. If the PostScript
file complies with the Adobe Document Structuring Conventions
and contains a %%BoundingBox comment, then the bounding box can
be automatically extracted from within groff by using the psbb
request.
The -mps macros (which are automatically loaded when grops is
run by the groff command) include a PSPIC macro which allows a
picture to be easily imported. This has the format
.PSPIC [-L|-R|-I n] file [width [height]]
file is the name of the file containing the illustration; width
and height give the desired width and height of the graphic.
The width and height arguments may have scaling indicators
attached; the default scaling indicator is i. This macro will
scale the graphic uniformly in the x and y directions so that
it is no more than width wide and height high. By default, the
graphic will be horizontally centered. The -L and -R cause the
graphic to be left-aligned and right-aligned respectively. The
-I option causes the graphic to be indented by n.
\X’ps: invis’
\X’ps: endinvis’
No output will be generated for text and drawing commands that
are bracketed with these \X commands. These commands are
intended for use when output from troff will be previewed
before being processed with grops; if the previewer is unable
to display certain characters or other constructs, then other
substitute characters or constructs can be used for previewing
by bracketing them with these \X commands.
For example, gxditview is not able to display a proper \(em
character because the standard X11 fonts do not provide it;
this problem can be overcome by executing the following request
.char \(em \X’ps: invis’\
\Z’\v’-.25m’\h’.05m’\D’l .9m 0’\h’.05m’’\
\X’ps: endinvis’\(em
In this case, gxditview will be unable to display the \(em
character and will draw the line, whereas grops will print the
\(em character and ignore the line.
The input to grops must be in the format output by troff(1). This is
described in groff_out(5). In addition the device and font descrip-
tion files for the device used must meet certain requirements. The
device and font description files supplied for ps device meet all
these requirements. afmtodit(1) can be used to create font files from
AFM files. The resolution must be an integer multiple of 72 times the
sizescale. The ps device uses a resolution of 72000 and a sizescale
of 1000. The device description file should contain a command
paperlength n
which says that output should be generated which is suitable for
printing on a page whose length is n machine units. Common values are
792000 for letter paper and 841890 for paper in A4 format. Alterna-
tively, it can contain
papersize string
to specify a paper size; see groff_font(5) for more information. Each
font description file must contain a command
internalname psname
which says that the PostScript name of the font is psname. It may
also contain a command
encoding enc_file
which says that the PostScript font should be reencoded using the
encoding described in enc_file; this file should consist of a sequence
of lines of the form:
pschar code
where pschar is the PostScript name of the character, and code is its
position in the encoding expressed as a decimal integer. Lines start-
ing with # and blank lines are ignored. The code for each character
given in the font file must correspond to the code for the character
in encoding file, or to the code in the default encoding for the font
if the PostScript font is not to be reencoded. This code can be used
with the \N escape sequence in troff to select the character, even if
the character does not have a groff name. Every character in the font
file must exist in the PostScript font, and the widths given in the
font file must match the widths used in the PostScript font. grops
will assume that a character with a groff name of space is blank
(makes no marks on the page); it can make use of such a character to
generate more efficient and compact PostScript output.
grops can automatically include the downloadable fonts necessary to
print the document. Any downloadable fonts which should, when
required, be included by grops must be listed in the file
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/font/devps/download; this should consist of
lines of the form
font filename
where font is the PostScript name of the font, and filename is the
name of the file containing the font; lines beginning with # and blank
lines are ignored; fields may be separated by tabs or spaces; filename
will be searched for using the same mechanism that is used for groff
font metric files. The download file itself will also be searched for
using this mechanism; currently, only the first found file in the font
path is used.
If the file containing a downloadable font or imported document con-
forms to the Adobe Document Structuring Conventions, then grops will
interpret any comments in the files sufficiently to ensure that its
own output is conforming. It will also supply any needed font
resources that are listed in the download file as well as any needed
file resources. It is also able to handle inter-resource dependen-
cies. For example, suppose that you have a downloadable font called
Garamond, and also a downloadable font called Garamond-Outline which
depends on Garamond (typically it would be defined to copy Garamond’s
font dictionary, and change the PaintType), then it is necessary for
Garamond to be appear before Garamond-Outline in the PostScript docu-
ment. grops will handle this automatically provided that the down-
loadable font file for Garamond-Outline indicates its dependence on
Garamond by means of the Document Structuring Conventions, for example
by beginning with the following lines
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 Resource-Font
%%DocumentNeededResources: font Garamond
%%EndComments
%%IncludeResource: font Garamond
In this case both Garamond and Garamond-Outline would need to be
listed in the download file. A downloadable font should not include
its own name in a %%DocumentSuppliedResources comment.
grops will not interpret %%DocumentFonts comments. The %%Document-
NeededResources, %%DocumentSuppliedResources, %%IncludeResource,
%%BeginResource and %%EndResource comments (or possibly the old %%Doc-
umentNeededFonts, %%DocumentSuppliedFonts, %%IncludeFont, %%BeginFont
and %%EndFont comments) should be used.
TrueType fonts
TrueType fonts can be used with grops if converted first to Type 42
format, an especial PostScript wrapper equivalent to the PFA format
mentioned in pfbtops(1). There are several different methods to gen-
erate a type42 wrapper and most of them involve the use of a
PostScript interpreter such as Ghostscript — see gs(1). Yet, the eas-
iest method involves the use of the application ttftot42. This pro-
gram uses freetype(3) (version 1.3.1) to generate type42 font wrappers
and well-formed AFM files that can be fed to the afmtodit(1) script to
create appropriate metric files. The resulting font wrappers should
be added to the download file. ttftot42 source code can be downloaded
from ftp://www.giga.or.at/pub/nih/ttftot42/ 〈ftp://www.giga.or.at/pub/
nih/ttftot42/〉.
ENVIRONMENT
GROPS_PROLOGUE
If this is set to foo, then grops will use the file foo (in the
font path) instead of the default prologue file prologue. The
option -P overrides this environment variable.
FILES
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/font/devps/DESC
Device description file.
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/font/devps/F
Font description file for font F.
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/font/devps/download
List of downloadable fonts.
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/font/devps/text.enc
Encoding used for text fonts.
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/tmac/ps.tmac
Macros for use with grops; automatically loaded by troffrc
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/tmac/pspic.tmac
Definition of PSPIC macro, automatically loaded by ps.tmac.
/usr/share/groff/1.18.1.1/tmac/psold.tmac
Macros to disable use of characters not present in older
PostScript printers (e.g. ‘eth’ or ‘thorn’).
/tmp/gropsXXXXXX
Temporary file.
SEE ALSO
afmtodit(1), groff(1), troff(1), psbb(1), groff_out(5), groff_font(5),
groff_char(7)
Groff Version 1.18.1.1 16 August 2002 GROPS(1)
