nroff(1) — Linux manual page

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nroff(1)                 General Commands Manual                nroff(1)

Name top

       nroff - format documents with groff for TTY (terminal) devices

Synopsis top

       nroff [-bcCEhikpRStUVz] [-d ctext] [-d string=text] [-K fallback-
             encoding] [-m macro-package] [-M macro-directory] [-n page-
             number] [-o page-list] [-P postprocessor-argument]
             [-r cnumeric-expression] [-r register=numeric-expression]
             [-T output-device] [-w warning-category] [-W warning-
             category] [file ...]

       nroff --help

       nroff -v
       nroff --version

Description top

       nroff formats documents written in the language for typewriter-
       like devices such as terminal emulators.  GNU nroff emulates the
       AT&T nroff command using nroff generates output via groff's
       terminal output driver, which needs to know the character
       encoding scheme used by the device.  Consequently, acceptable
       arguments to the -T option are ascii, latin1, utf8, and cp1047;
       any others are ignored.  If neither the GROFF_TYPESETTER
       environment variable nor the -T command-line option (which
       overrides the environment variable) specifies a (valid) device,
       nroff consults the locale to select an appropriate output device.
       It first tries the program, then checks several locale-related
       environment variables; see section “Environment” below.  If all
       of the foregoing fail, -Tascii is implied.

       The -b, -c, -C, -d, -E, -i, -m, -M, -n, -o, -r, -U, -w, -W, and
       -z options have the effects described in -c and -h imply “-P-c”
       and “-P-h”, respectively; -c is also interpreted directly by
       troff.  In addition, this implementation ignores the AT&T nroff
       options -e, -q, and -s (which are not implemented in groff).  The
       options -k, -K, -p, -P, -R, -t, and -S are documented in -V
       causes nroff to display the constructed groff command on the
       standard output stream, but does not execute it.  -v and
       --version show version information about nroff and the programs
       it runs, while --help displays a usage message; all exit
       afterward.

Exit status top

       nroff exits with error status 2 if there was a problem parsing
       its arguments, with status 0 if any of the options -V, -v,
       --version, or --help were specified, and with the status of groff
       otherwise.

Environment top

       Normally, the path separator in environment variables ending with
       PATH is the colon; this may vary depending on the operating
       system.  For example, Windows uses a semicolon instead.

       GROFF_BIN_PATH
              is a colon-separated list of directories in which to
              search for the groff executable before searching in PATH.
              If unset, /usr/local/bin is used.

       GROFF_TYPESETTER
              specifies the default output device for groff.

       LC_ALL
       LC_CTYPE
       LANG
       LESSCHARSET
              are pattern-matched in this order for contents matching
              standard character encodings supported by groff in the
              event no -T option is given and GROFF_TYPESETTER is unset,
              or the values specified are invalid.

Files top

       /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/tty-char.tmac
              defines fallback definitions of roff special characters.
              These definitions more poorly optically approximate
              typeset output compared to those of tty.tmac in favor of
              communicating semantic information.  nroff loads it
              automatically.

Notes top

       Pager programs like and may require command-line options to
       correctly handle some output sequences; see

COLOPHON top

       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                    nroff(1)

Pages that refer to this page: col(1), colcrt(1), man(1), ul(1), zsoelim(1)

nroff(1) — Linux manual page

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