groff Command Examples

GNU replacement for the troff and nroff typesetting utilities. More information: https://www.gnu.org/software/groff.

• Format output for a PostScript printer, saving the output to a file:

groff {{path/to/input.roff}} > {{path/to/output.ps}}

• Render a man page using the ASCII output device, and display it using a pager:

groff -man -T ascii {{path/to/manpage.1}} | less --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS

• Render a man page into an HTML file:

groff -man -T html {{path/to/manpage.1}} > {{path/to/manpage.html}}

• Typeset a roff file containing [t]ables and [p]ictures, using the [me] macro set, to PDF, saving the output:

groff {{-t}} {{-p}} -{{me}} -T {{pdf}} {{path/to/input.me}} > {{path/to/output.pdf}}

• Run a groff command with preprocessor and macro options guessed by the grog utility:

eval "$(grog -T utf8 {{path/to/input.me}})"