|
Name | Synopsis | Description | Options | Usage | Font installation | Environment | Files | See also | COLOPHON |
|
|
|
gropdf(1) General Commands Manual gropdf(1)
gropdf - groff output driver for Portable Document Format
gropdf [-dels] [-F font-directory] [-I inclusion-directory]
[-p paper-format] [-u [cmap-file]] [-y foundry] [file ...]
gropdf -v
gropdf --version
The GNU roff PDF output driver translates the output of into
Portable Document Format. Normally, gropdf is invoked by when
the latter is given the “-T pdf” option. (In this installation,
ps is the default output device.) Use groff's -P option to pass
any options shown above to gropdf. If no file arguments are
given, or if file is “-”, gropdf reads the standard input stream.
Output is written to the standard output stream.
See section “Font installation” below for a guide to installing
fonts for gropdf.
-v and --version show version information; both exit afterward.
-d Include debug information as comments within the PDF.
Also produces an uncompressed PDF.
-e Forces gropdf to embed all fonts (even the 14 base PDF
fonts).
-F dir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for font,
and device description files; name is the name of the
device, usually pdf.
-I dir Search the directory dir for files named in \X'pdf:
pdfpic' escape sequences. -I may be specified more than
once; each dir is searched in the given order. To search
the current working directory before others, add “-I .” at
the desired place; it is otherwise searched last.
-l Orient the document in landscape format.
-p paper-format
Set the physical dimensions of the output medium. This
overrides the papersize, paperlength, and paperwidth
directives in the DESC file; it accepts the same arguments
as the papersize directive. See for details.
-s Append a comment line to end of PDF showing statistics,
i.e. number of pages in document. Ghostscript's ps2pdf
complains about this line if it is included, but works
anyway.
-u [cmap-file]
gropdf normally includes a ToUnicode CMap with any font
created using text.enc as the encoding file, this makes it
easier to search for words which contain ligatures. You
can include your own CMap by specifying a cmap-file or
have no CMap at all by omitting the argument.
-y foundry
Set the foundry to use for selecting fonts of the same
name.
The input to gropdf must be in the format output by This is
described in
In addition, the device and font description files for the device
used must meet certain requirements: The resolution must be an
integer multiple of 72 times the sizescale. The pdf device uses
a resolution of 72000 and a sizescale of 1000.
The device description file must contain a valid paper format;
see gropdf uses the same Type 1 Adobe PostScript fonts as the
grops device driver. Although the PDF Standard allows the use of
other font types (like TrueType) this implementation only accepts
the Type 1 PostScript font. Fewer Type 1 fonts are supported
natively in PDF documents than the standard 35 fonts supported by
grops and all PostScript printers, but all the fonts are
available since any which aren't supported natively are
automatically embedded in the PDF.
gropdf supports the concept of foundries, that is different
versions of basically the same font. During install a Foundry
file controls where fonts are found and builds groff fonts from
the files it discovers on your system.
Each font description file must contain a command
internalname psname
which says that the PostScript name of the font is psname. Lines
starting with # and blank lines are ignored. The code for each
character given in the font file must correspond to the code in
the default encoding for the font. 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.
Note that gropdf is currently only able to display the first 256
glyphs in any font. This restriction will be lifted in a later
version.
gropdf can automatically include the downloadable fonts necessary
to print the document. Fonts may be in PFA or PFB format.
Any downloadable fonts which should, when required, be included
by gropdf must be listed in the file /usr/local/share/groff/
1.23.0/font/devpdf/download; this should consist of lines of the
form
foundry font filename
where foundry is the foundry name or blank for the default
foundry. 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 must be separated by tabs
(spaces are not allowed); filename is searched for using the same
mechanism that is used for groff font metric files. The download
file itself is also sought using this mechanism. Foundry names
are usually a single character (such as ‘U’ for the URW foundry)
or empty for the default foundry. This default uses the same
fonts as ghostscript uses when it embeds fonts in a PDF file.
In the default setup 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 S for the PS Symbol
font. The lower case greek characters are automatically slanted
(to match the SymbolSlanted font (SS) available to PostScript).
Zapf Dingbats is available as ZD; the “hand pointing left” glyph
(\[lh]) is available since it has been defined using the \X'pdf:
xrev' extension which reverses the direction of letters within
words.
The default color for \m and \M is black.
gropdf understands some of the X commands produced using the \X
escape sequences supported by grops. Specifically, the following
is supported.
\X'ps: invis'
Suppress output.
\X'ps: endinvis'
Stop suppressing output.
\X'ps: exec gsave currentpoint 2 copy translate n rotate neg exch
neg exch translate'
where n is the angle of rotation. This is to support the
align command in gpic.
\X'ps: exec grestore'
Again used by gpic to restore after rotation.
\X'ps: exec n setlinejoin'
where n can be one of the following values.
0 = Miter join
1 = Round join
2 = Bevel join
\X'ps: exec n setlinecap'
where n can be one of the following values.
0 = Butt cap
1 = Round cap, and
2 = Projecting square cap
\X'ps: ... pdfmark'
All the pdfmark macros installed by using -m pdfmark or -m
mspdf (see documentation in pdfmark.pdf). A subset of
these macros are installed automatically when you use
-Tpdf so you should not need to use ‘-m pdfmark’ for using
most of the PDF functionality.
gropdf also supports a subset of the commands introduced in
present.tmac. Specifically it supports:-
PAUSE
BLOCKS
BLOCKE
Which allows you to create presentation type PDFs. Many of the
other commands are already available in other macro packages.
These commands are implemented with groff X commands:-
\X'ps: exec %%%%PAUSE'
The section before this is treated as a block and is
introduced using the current BLOCK transition setting (see
“\X'pdf: transition'” below). This command can be
introduced using the macro .pdfpause.
\X'ps: exec %%%%BEGINONCE'
Any text following this command (up to %%%%ENDONCE) is
shown only once, the next %%%%PAUSE will remove it. If
producing a non presentation pdf, i.e. ignoring the
pauses, see GROPDF_NOSLIDE below, this text is ignored.
\X'ps: exec %%%%ENDONCE'
This terminates the block defined by %%%%BEGINONCE. This
pair of commands is what implements the .BLOCKS
Once/.BLOCKE commands in present.tmac.
The mom macro set already has integration with these extensions
so you can build slides with mom.
If you use present.tmac with gropdf there is no need to run the
program since the output will already be a presentation pdf.
All other ps: tags are silently ignored.
One \X special used by the DVI driver is also recognised:
\X'papersize=paper-format'
where the paper-format parameter is the same as that to
the papersize directive. See This means that you can
alter the page size at will within the PDF file being
created by gropdf. If you do want to change the paper
format, it must be done before you start creating the
page.
In addition, gropdf supports its own suite of pdf: tags. The
following tags are supported:
\X'pdf: pdfpic file alignment width height line-length'
Place an image of the specified width containing the PDF
drawing from file file of desired width and height (if
height is missing or zero then it is scaled
proportionally). If alignment is -L the drawing is left
aligned. If it is -C or -R a linelength greater than the
width of the drawing is required as well. If width is
specified as zero then the width is scaled in proportion
to the height.
\X'pdf: xrev'
This toggles a flag which reverses the direction of
printing letter by letter, i.e., each separate letter is
reversed, not the entire word. This is useful for
reversing the direction of glyphs in the Dingbats font.
To return to normal printing repeat the command again.
\X'pdf: markstart /ANN-definition'
\X'pdf: markend'
The macros which support PDF bookmarks use these calls
internally to start and stop (respectively) the definition
of bookmark hot spot; the user will have called
“.pdfhref L” with the text which will become the hot spot
region). Normally, these are never used except from
within the pdfmark macros.
\X'pdf: marksuspend'
\X'pdf: markrestart'
If you are using page traps to produce headings, footings,
etc., you need to use these in case a ‘hot spot’ crosses a
page boundary, otherwise any text output by the heading or
footing macro will be marked as part of the ‘hot spot’.
To stop this happening just place ‘.pdfmarksuspend’ and
‘.pdfmarkrestart’ at the start and end of the page trap
macro, respectively. (These are just convenience macros
which emit the corresponding \X escapes sequence. These
macros must be used only within page traps.)
\X'pdf: pagename name'
This gives the current page a name.
There are two default names for any document which do not
need to be declared ‘top’ and ‘bottom’.
The convenience command for this is .pdfpagename.
\X'pdf: switchtopage when name'
Normally each new page is appended to the end of the
document, this command allows following pages to be
inserted at a ‘named’ position within the document (see
pagename command above). ‘when’ can be either ‘after’ or
‘before’. If it is ommitted it defaults to ‘before’.
The convenience command for this is .pdfswitchtopage. It
should be used at the end of the page before you want the
switch to happen.
This allows pages such as a TOC to be moved to elsewhere
in the document, but more esoteric uses are possible.
\X'pdf: transition feature mode duration dimension motion
direction scale bool'
where feature can be either SLIDE or BLOCK. When it is
SLIDE the transition is used when a new slide is
introduced to the screen, if BLOCK then this transition is
used for the individual blocks which make up the slide.
mode is the transition type between slides:-
Split - Two lines sweep across the screen,
revealing the new page. The lines may be either
horizontal or vertical and may move inward from the
edges of the page or outward from the center, as
specified by the dimension and motion entries,
respectively.
Blinds - Multiple lines, evenly spaced across the
screen, synchronously sweep in the same direction
to reveal the new page. The lines may be either
horizontal or vertical, as specified by the
dimension entry. Horizontal lines move downward;
vertical lines move to the right.
Box - A rectangular box sweeps inward from the
edges of the page or outward from the center, as
specified by the motion entry, revealing the new
page.
Wipe - A single line sweeps across the screen from
one edge to the other in the direction specified by
the direction entry, revealing the new page.
Dissolve - The old page dissolves gradually to
reveal the new one.
Glitter - Similar to Dissolve, except that the
effect sweeps across the page in a wide band moving
from one side of the screen to the other in the
direction specified by the direction entry.
R - The new page simply replaces the old one with
no special transition effect; the direction entry
shall be ignored.
Fly - (PDF 1.5) Changes are flown out or in (as
specified by motion), in the direction specified by
direction, to or from a location that is offscreen
except when direction is None.
Push - (PDF 1.5) The old page slides off the screen
while the new page slides in, pushing the old page
out in the direction specified by direction.
Cover - (PDF 1.5) The new page slides on to the
screen in the direction specified by direction,
covering the old page.
Uncover - (PDF 1.5) The old page slides off the
screen in the direction specified by direction,
uncovering the new page in the direction specified
by direction.
Fade - (PDF 1.5) The new page gradually becomes
visible through the old one.
duration is the length of the transition in seconds
(default 1).
dimension (Optional; Split and Blinds transition styles
only) The dimension in which the specified transition
effect shall occur: H Horizontal, or V Vertical.
motion (Optional; Split, Box and Fly transition styles
only) The direction of motion for the specified transition
effect: I Inward from the edges of the page, or O Outward
from the center of the page.
direction (Optional; Wipe, Glitter, Fly, Cover, Uncover
and Push transition styles only) The direction in which
the specified transition effect shall moves, expressed in
degrees counterclockwise starting from a left-to-right
direction. If the value is a number, it shall be one of:
0 = Left to right, 90 = Bottom to top (Wipe only), 180 =
Right to left (Wipe only), 270 = Top to bottom, 315 = Top-
left to bottom-right (Glitter only) The value can be None,
which is relevant only for the Fly transition when the
value of scale is not 1.0.
scale (Optional; PDF 1.5; Fly transition style only) The
starting or ending scale at which the changes shall be
drawn. If motion specifies an inward transition, the
scale of the changes drawn shall progress from scale to
1.0 over the course of the transition. If motion
specifies an outward transition, the scale of the changes
drawn shall progress from 1.0 to scale over the course of
the transition
bool (Optional; PDF 1.5; Fly transition style only) If
true, the area that shall be flown in is rectangular and
opaque.
This command can be used by calling the macro
.pdftransition using the parameters described above. Any
of the parameters may be replaced with a "." which
signifies the parameter retains its previous value, also
any trailing missing parameters are ignored.
Note: not all PDF Readers support any or all these
transitions.
\X'pdf: background cmd left top right bottom weight'
\X'pdf: background off'
\X'pdf: background footnote bottom'
produces a background rectangle on the page, where
cmd is the command, which can be any of “page|fill|box”
in combination. Thus, “pagefill” would draw a
rectangle which covers the whole current page size
(in which case the rest of the parameters can be
omitted because the box dimensions are taken from
the current media size). “boxfill”, on the other
hand, requires the given dimensions to place the
box. Including “fill” in the command will paint
the rectangle with the current fill colour (as with
\M[]) and including “box” will give the rectangle a
border in the current stroke colour (as with \m[]).
cmd may also be “off” on its own, which will
terminate drawing the current box. If you have
specified a page colour with “pagefill”, it is
always the first box in the stack, and if you
specify it again, it will replace the first entry.
Be aware that the “pagefill” box renders the page
opaque, so tools that “watermark” PDF pages are
unlikely to be successful. To return the
background to transparent, issue an “off” command
with no other boxes open.
Finally, cmd may be “footnote” followed by a new
value for bottom, which will be used for all open
boxes on the current page. This is to allow room
for footnote areas that grow while a page is
processed (to accommodate multiple footnotes, for
instance). (If the value is negative, it is used
as an offset from the bottom of the page.)
left
top
right
bottom are the coordinates of the box. The top and bottom
coordinates are the minimum and maximum for the
box, since the actual start of the box is groff's
drawing position when you issue the command, and
the bottom of the box is the point where you turn
the box “off”. The top and bottom coordinates are
used only if the box drawing extends onto the next
page; ordinarily, they would be set to the header
and footer margins.
weight provides the line width for the border if “box” is
included in the command.
The convenience macro for this escape sequence is
.pdfbackground. An sboxes macro file is also available;
see
Importing graphics
gropdf supports only the inclusion of other PDF files for inline
images. Such a PDF file may, however, contain any of the graphic
formats supported by the PDF standard, such as JPEG/JFIF, PNG,
and GIF. Any application that outputs PDF can thus be used to
prepare files for embedding in documents processed by groff and
gropdf.
The PDF file you wish to insert must be a single page and the
drawing must just fit inside the media size of the PDF file. In
or for example, make sure the canvas size just fits the image.
The PDF parser gropdf implements has not been rigorously tested
with all applications that produce PDF. If you find a single-
page PDF which fails to import properly, try processing it with
the program.
pdftk existing-file output new-file
You may find that new-file imports successfully.
TrueType and other font formats
gropdf does not yet support any font formats besides Adobe Type 1
(PFA or PFB).
The following is a step-by-step font installation guide for
gropdf.
• Convert your font to something groff understands. This is a
PostScript Type 1 font in PFA or PFB format, together with an
AFM file. A PFA file begins as follows.
%!PS-AdobeFont-1.0:
A PFB file contains this string as well, preceded by some non-
printing bytes. In the following steps, we will consider the
use of CTAN's BrushScriptX-Italic
⟨https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/brushscr⟩ font in PFA
format.
• Convert the AFM file to a groff font description file with the
program. For instance,
$ afmtodit BrushScriptX-Italic.afm text.map BSI
converts the Adobe Font Metric file BrushScriptX-Italic.afm to
the groff font description file BSI.
If you have a font family which provides regular upright
(roman), bold, italic, and bold-italic styles, (where “italic”
may be “oblique” or “slanted”), we recommend using R, B, I, and
BI, respectively, as suffixes to the groff font family name to
enable groff's font family and style selection features. An
example is groff's built-in support for Times: the font family
name is abbreviated as T, and the groff font names are
therefore TR, TB, TI, and TBI. In our example, however, the
BrushScriptX font is available in a single style only, italic.
• Install the groff font description file(s) in a devpdf
subdirectory in the search path that groff uses for device and
font file descriptions. See the GROFF_FONT_PATH entry in
section “Environment” of for the current value of the font
search path. While groff doesn't directly use AFM files, it is
a good idea to store them alongside its font description files.
• Register fonts in the devpdf/download file so they can be
located for embedding in PDF files gropdf generates. Only the
first download file encountered in the font search path is
read. If in doubt, copy the default download file (see section
“Files” below) to the first directory in the font search path
and add your fonts there. The PostScript font name used by
gropdf is stored in the internalname field in the groff font
description file. (This name does not necessarily resemble the
font's file name.) If the font in our example had originated
from a foundry named Z, we would add the following line to
download.
Z→BrushScriptX-Italic→BrushScriptX-Italic.pfa
A tab character, depicted as →, separates the fields. The
default foundry has no name: its field is empty and entries
corresponding to it start with a tab character, as will the one
in our example.
• Test the selection and embedding of the new font.
printf "\\f[BSI]Hello, world!\n" | groff -T pdf -P -e >hello.pdf
see hello.pdf
GROFF_FONT_PATH
A list of directories in which to seek the selected output
device's directory of device and font description files.
If, in the download file, the font file has been specified
with a full path, no directories are searched. See and
GROPDF_NOSLIDE
If this is set true, gropdf will ignore all commands which
produce a presentation pdf, and produce a normal pdf
instead.
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
A timestamp (expressed as seconds since the Unix epoch) to
use as the output creation timestamp in place of the
current time. The time is converted to human-readable
form using Perl's localtime() function and recorded in a
PDF comment.
TZ The time zone to use when converting the current time (or
value of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH) to human-readable form; see
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/DESC
describes the pdf output device.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/F
describes the font known as F on device pdf.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/U-F
describes the font from the URW foundry (versus the Adobe
default) known as F on device pdf.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/download
lists fonts available for embedding within the PDF
document (by analogy to the ps device's downloadable font
support).
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/Foundry
is a data file used by the groff build system to locate
PostScript Type 1 fonts.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/enc/text.enc
describes the encoding scheme used by most PostScript
Type 1 fonts; the encoding directive of font description
files for the pdf device refers to it.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/pdf.tmac
defines macros for use with the pdf output device. It is
automatically loaded by troffrc when the pdf output device
is selected.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/pdfpic.tmac
defines the PDFPIC macro for embedding images in a
document; see It is automatically loaded by troffrc.
/usr/local/share/doc/groff-1.23.0/sboxes/msboxes.ms
/usr/local/share/doc/groff-1.23.0/sboxes/msboxes.pdf
“Using PDF boxes with groff and the ms macros”, by Deri
James.
This page is part of the groff (GNU troff) project. Information
about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/groff.git⟩ on 2022-12-17. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2022-12-14.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
groff 1.23.0.rc1.3569-94746-d1i4rtDyecember 2022 gropdf(1)
|
HTML rendering created 2022-12-18 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface, maintainer of the Linux man-pages project. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|