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Name | Description | Macro packages | Naming | Inclusion | Writing macros | Authors | See also | COLOPHON |
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groff_tmac(5) File Formats Manual groff_tmac(5)
groff_tmac - macro files in the GNU roff typesetting system
Definitions of macros, strings, and registers for use in a roff(7)
document can be collected into macro files, roff input files
designed to produce no output themselves but instead ease the
preparation of other roff documents. There is no syntactical
difference between a macro file and any other roff document; only
its purpose distinguishes it. When a macro file is installed at a
standard location, named according to a certain convention, and
suitable for use by a general audience, it is termed a macro
package. Macro packages can be loaded by supplying the -m option
to troff(1) or a groff front end.
Each macro package stores its macro, string, and register
definitions in one or more tmac files. This name originated in
early Unix culture as an abbreviation of “troff macros”.
A macro file must have a name in the form name.tmac (or tmac.name)
and be placed in a “tmac directory” to be loadable with the -mname
option. Section “Environment” of troff(1) lists these
directories. Alternatively, a groff document requiring a macro
file can load it with the mso (“macro source”) request.
Like any other roff document, a macro file can use the “so”
request (“source”) to load further files relative to its own
location.
Macro files are named for their most noteworthy application, but a
macro file need not define any macros. It can restrict itself to
defining registers and strings or invoking other groff requests.
It can even be empty.
Macro packages come in two varieties; those which assume
responsibility for page layout and other critical functions
(“major” or “full-service”) and those which do not (“supplemental”
or “auxiliary”). GNU roff provides most major macro packages
found in AT&T and BSD Unix systems, an additional full-service
package, and many supplemental packages. Multiple full-service
macro packages cannot be used by the same document. Auxiliary
packages can generally be freely combined, though attention to
their use of the groff language name spaces for identifiers
(particularly registers, macros, strings, and diversions) should
be paid. Name space management was a significant challenge in
AT&T troff; groff's support for arbitrarily long identifiers
affords few excuses for name collisions, apart from attempts at
compatibility with the demands of historical documents.
Man pages
an
man an is used to compose man pages in the format originating
in Version 7 Unix (1979). It has a small macro interface
and is widely used; see groff_man(7).
doc
mdoc doc is used to compose man pages in the format originating
in 4.3BSD-Reno (1990). It provides many more features than
an, but is also larger, more complex, and not as widely
adopted; see groff_mdoc(7).
Because readers of man pages often do not know in advance which
macros are used to format a given document, a wrapper is
available.
andoc
mandoc This macro file, specific to groff, recognizes whether a
document uses man or mdoc format and loads the
corresponding macro package. Multiple man pages, in either
format, can be handled; andoc reloads each macro package as
necessary.
Full-service packages
The packages in this section provide a complete set of macros for
writing documents of any kind, up to whole books. They are
similar in functionality; it is a matter of taste which one to
use.
me The classical me macro package; see groff_me(7).
mm The semi-classical mm macro package; see groff_mm(7).
mom The mom macro package, only available in groff. As this
was not based on other packages, it was freely designed as
quite a nice, modern macro package. See groff_mom(7).
ms The classical ms macro package; see groff_ms(7).
Localization packages
For Western languages, the localization file sets the hyphenation
mode and loads hyphenation patterns and exceptions. Localization
files can also adjust the date format and provide translations of
strings used by some of the full-service macro packages; alter the
input encoding (see the next section); and change the amount of
additional inter-sentence space. For Eastern languages, the
localization file defines character classes and sets flags on
them. By default, troffrc loads the localization file for
English.
trans loads localized strings used by various macro packages
after their localized forms have been prepared by a
localization macro file.
groff provides the following localization files.
cs Czech; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input
encoding to Latin-2 by loading latin2.tmac.
de
den German; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input
encoding to Latin-1 by loading latin1.tmac.
de.tmac selects hyphenation patterns for traditional
orthography, and den.tmac does the same for the new
orthography (“Rechtschreibreform”).
en English.
fr French; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the input
encoding to Latin-9 by loading latin9.tmac.
it Italian; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms.
ja Japanese.
sv Swedish; localizes man, me, mm, mom, and ms. Sets the
input encoding to Latin-1 by loading latin1.tmac. Some of
the localization of the mm package is handled separately;
see groff_mmse(7).
zh Chinese.
Input encodings
latin1
latin2
latin5
latin9 are various ISO 8859 input encodings supported by groff.
On systems using ISO character encodings, groff loads
latin1.tmac automatically at startup. A document that uses
Latin-2, Latin-5, or Latin-9 can specify one of these
alternative encodings.
cp1047 provides support for EBCDIC-based systems. On those
platforms, groff loads cp1047.tmac automatically at
startup.
Because different input character codes constitute valid GNU troff
input on ISO and EBCDIC systems, the latin macro files cannot be
used on EBCDIC systems, and cp1047 cannot be used on ISO systems.
Auxiliary packages
The macro packages in this section are not intended for stand-
alone use, but can add functionality to any other macro package or
to plain (“raw”) groff documents.
62bit provides macros for addition, multiplication, and division
of 62-bit integers (allowing safe multiplication of signed
31-bit integers, for example).
hdtbl allows the generation of tables using a syntax similar to
the HTML table model. This Heidelberger table macro
package is not a preprocessor, which can be useful if the
contents of table entries are determined by macro calls or
string interpolations. Compare to tbl(1). It works only
with the ps and pdf output devices. See groff_hdtbl(7).
papersize
enables the paper format to be set on the command line by
giving a “-d paper=format” option to troff. Possible
values for format are the ISO and DIN formats “A0–A6”,
“B0–B6”, “C0–C6”, and “D0–D6”; the U.S. formats “letter”,
“legal”, “tabloid”, “ledger”, “statement”, and “executive”;
and the envelope formats “com10”, “monarch”, and “DL”. All
formats, even those for envelopes, are in portrait
orientation: the length measurement is vertical. Appending
“l” (ell) to any of these denotes landscape orientation
instead. This macro file assumes one-inch horizontal
margins, and sets registers recognized by the groff man,
mdoc, mm, mom, and ms packages to configure them
accordingly. If you want different margins, you will need
to use those packages' facilities, or troff ll and/or po
requests to adjust them. An output device typically
requires command-line options -p and -l to override the
paper dimensions and orientation, respectively, defined in
its DESC file; see subsection “Paper format” of groff(1).
This macro file is normally loaded at startup by the
troffrc file when formatting for a typesetting device (but
not a terminal).
pdfpic provides a single macro, PDFPIC, to include a PDF graphic
in a document using features of the pdf output driver. For
other output devices, PDFPIC calls PSPIC, with which it
shares an interface (see below). This macro file is
normally loaded at startup by the troffrc file.
pic supplies definitions of the macros PS, PE, and PF, usable
with the pic(1) preprocessor. They center each picture.
Use it if your document does not use a full-service macro
package, or that package does not supply working pic macro
definitions. Except for man and mdoc, those provided with
groff already do so (exception: mm employs the name PF for
a different purpose).
pspic provides a macro, PSPIC, that includes a PostScript graphic
in a document. The ps, dvi, html, and xhtml output devices
support such inclusions; for all other drivers, the image
is replaced with a rectangular border of the same size.
pspic.tmac is loaded at startup by the troffrc file.
Its syntax is as follows.
.PSPIC [-L|-R|-C|-I n] file [width [height]]
file is the name of the PostScript file; width and height
give the desired width and height of the image. If neither
a width nor a height argument is specified, the image's
natural width (as given in the file's bounding box) or the
current line length is used as the width, whatever is
smaller. The width and height arguments may have scaling
units attached; the default scaling unit is i. PSPIC
scales the graphic uniformly in the horizontal and vertical
directions so that it is no more than width wide and height
high. Option -C centers the graphic horizontally; this is
the default. -L and -R left- and right-align the graphic,
respectively. -I indents the graphic by n (with a default
scaling unit of m).
To use PSPIC within a diversion, we recommend extending it
with the following code, assuring that the diversion's
width completely covers the image's width.
.am PSPIC
. vpt 0
\h'(\\n[ps-offset]u + \\n[ps-deswid]u)'
. sp -1
. vpt 1
..
Failure to load PSPIC's image argument is not an error.
(The psbb request does issue an error diagnostic.) To make
such a failure fatal, append to the pspic*error-hook macro.
.am pspic*error-hook
. ab
..
ptx provides a macro, xx, to format permuted index entries as
produced by the GNU ptx(1) program. If your formatting
needs differ, copy the macro into your document and adapt
it to your needs.
rfc1345
defines special character escape sequences named for the
glyph mnemonics specified in RFC 1345 and the digraph table
of the Vim text editor. See groff_rfc1345(7).
sboxes offers an interface to the “pdf: background” device control
command supported by gropdf(1). Using this package, groff
ms documents can draw colored rectangles beneath any
output.
.BOXSTART SHADED color OUTLINED color INDENT size WEIGHT size
begins a box, where the argument after SHADED gives
the fill color and that after OUTLINED the border
color. Omit the former to get a borderless filled
box and the latter for a border with no fill. The
specified WEIGHT is used if the box is OUTLINED.
INDENT precedes a value which leaves a gap between
the border and the contents inside the box.
Each color must be a defined groff color name, and
each size a valid groff numeric expression. The
keyword/value pairs can be specified in any order.
Boxes can be stacked, so you can start a box within another
box; usually the later boxes would be smaller than the
containing box, but this is not enforced. When using
BOXSTART, the left position is the current indent minus the
INDENT in the command, and the right position is the left
position (calculated above) plus the current line length
and twice the indent.
.BOXSTOP
takes no parameters. It closes the most recently
started box at the current vertical position after
adding its INDENT spacing.
Your groff documents can conditionally exercise the sboxes
macros. The register GSBOX is defined if the package is
loaded, and interpolates a true value if the pdf output
device is in use.
sboxes furthermore hooks into the groff_ms(7) package to
receive notifications when footnotes are growing, so that
it can close boxes on a page before footnotes are printed.
When that condition obtains, sboxes will close open boxes
two points above the footnote separator and re-open them on
the next page. (This amount probably will not match the
box's INDENT.)
See “Using PDF boxes with groff and the ms macros”
⟨file:///usr/local/share/doc/groff-1.23.0/msboxes.pdf⟩ for
a demonstration.
trace aids the debugging of groff documents by tracing macro
calls. See groff_trace(7).
www defines macros corresponding to HTML elements. See
groff_www(7).
AT&T nroff and troff were implemented before the conventions of
the modern C getopt(3) call evolved, and used a naming scheme for
macro packages that looks odd to modern eyes. Macro packages were
typically loaded using the -m option to the formatter; when
directly followed by its argument without an intervening space,
this looked like a long option preceded by a single minus—a
sensation in the computer stone age. Macro packages therefore
came to be known by names that started with the letter “m”, which
was omitted from the name of the macro file as stored on disk.
For example, the manuscript macro package was stored as tmac.s and
loaded with the option -ms.
groff commands permit space between an option and its argument.
The syntax “groff -m s” makes the macro file name more clear but
may surprise users familiar with the original convention, unaware
that the package's “real” name was “s” all along. For such
packages of long pedigree, groff accommodates different users'
expectations by supplying wrapper macro files that load the
desired file with mso requests. Thus, all of “groff -m s”, “groff
-m ms”, “groff -ms”, and “groff -mms” serve to load the manuscript
macros.
Wrappers are not provided for packages of more recent vintage,
like www.tmac.
As noted in passing above, AT&T troff named macro files in the
form tmac.name. It has since become conventional in operating
systems to use a suffixed file name extension to suggest a file
type or format.
The traditional method of employing a macro package is to specify
the -m package option to the formatter, which then reads package's
macro file prior to any input files. Historically, package was
sought in a file named tmac.package (that is, with a “tmac.”
prefix). GNU troff searches for package.tmac in the macro path;
if not found, it looks for tmac.package instead, and vice versa.
Alternatively, one could include a macro file by using the request
“.so file-name” in the document; file-name is resolved relative to
the location of the input document. GNU troff offers an improved
feature in the similar request “mso package-file-name”, which
searches the macro path for package-file-name. Because its
argument is a file name, its “.tmac” component must be included
for the file to be found; however, as a convenience, if opening it
fails, mso strips any such suffix and tries again with a “tmac.”
prefix, and vice versa.
If a sourced file requires preprocessing, for example if it
includes tbl tables or eqn equations, the preprocessor soelim(1)
must be used. This can be achieved with a pipeline or, in groff,
by specifying the -s option to the formatter (or front end).
man(1) librarian programs generally call soelim automatically.
(Macro packages themselves generally do not require
preprocessing.)
A roff(7) document is a text file that is enriched by predefined
formatting constructs, such as requests, escape sequences,
strings, numeric registers, and macros from a macro package.
These elements are described in roff(7).
To give a document a personal style, it is most useful to extend
the existing elements by defining some macros for repeating tasks;
the best place for this is near the beginning of the document or
in a separate file.
Macros without arguments are just like strings. But the full
power of macros occurs when arguments are passed with a macro
call. Within the macro definition, the arguments are available as
the escape sequences \$1, ..., \$9, \$[...], \$*, and \$@, the
name under which the macro was called is in \$0, and the number of
arguments is in register \n[.$]; see groff(7).
Draft mode
Writing groff macros is easy when the escaping mechanism is
temporarily disabled. In groff, this is done by enclosing the
macro definition(s) within a pair of .eo and .ec requests. Then
the body in the macro definition is just like a normal part of the
document — text enhanced by calls of requests, macros, strings,
registers, etc. For example, the code above can be written in a
simpler way by
.eo
.ds midpart was called with the following
.de print_args
\f[I]\$0\f[] \*[midpart] \n[.$] arguments:
\$*
..
.ec
Unfortunately, draft mode cannot be used universally. Although it
is good enough for defining normal macros, draft mode fails with
advanced applications, such as indirectly defined strings,
registers, etc. An optimal way is to define and test all macros
in draft mode and then do the backslash doubling as a final step;
do not forget to remove the .eo request.
Tips for macro definitions
• Start every line with a dot, for example, by using the
groff request .nop for text lines, or write your own macro
that handles also text lines with a leading dot.
.de Text
. if (\\n[.$] == 0) \
. return
. nop \)\\$*\)
..
• Write a comment macro that works both for copy and draft
modes; since the escape character is off in draft mode,
trouble might occur when comment escape sequences are used.
For example, the following macro just ignores its
arguments, so it acts like a comment line:
.de c
..
.c This is like a comment line.
• In long macro definitions, make ample use of comment lines
or almost-empty lines (this is, lines which have a leading
dot and nothing else) for a better structuring.
• To increase readability, use groff's indentation facility
for requests and macro calls (arbitrary whitespace after
the leading dot).
Diversions
Diversions can be used to implement quite advanced programming
constructs. They are comparable to pointers to large data
structures in the C programming language, but their usage is quite
different.
In their simplest form, diversions are multi-line strings, but
diversions get their power when used dynamically within macros.
The (formatted) information stored in a diversion can be retrieved
by calling the diversion just like a macro.
Most of the problems arising with diversions can be avoided if you
remember that diversions always store complete lines. Using
diversions when the line buffer has not been flushed produces
strange results; not knowing this, many people get desperate about
diversions. To ensure that a diversion works, add line breaks at
the right places. To be safe, enclose everything that has to do
with diversions within a pair of line breaks; for example, by
explicitly using .br requests. This rule should be applied to
diversion definition, both inside and outside, and to all calls of
diversions. This is a bit of overkill, but it works nicely.
(If you really need diversions which should ignore the current
partial line, use environments to save the current partial line
and/or use the .box request.)
The most powerful feature using diversions is to start a diversion
within a macro definition and end it within another macro. Then
everything between each call of this macro pair is stored within
the diversion and can be manipulated from within the macros.
This document was written by Bernd Warken ⟨groff-bernd.warken-72@
web.de⟩, Werner Lemberg ⟨wl@gnu.org⟩, and G. Branden Robinson
⟨g.branden.robinson@gmail.com⟩.
Groff: The GNU Implementation of troff, by Trent A. Fisher and
Werner Lemberg, is the primary groff manual. You can browse it
interactively with “info groff”.
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
⟨https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/lsb/fhs⟩ is maintained by the
Linux Foundation.
groff(1)
is an overview of the groff system.
groff_man(7),
groff_mdoc(7),
groff_me(7),
groff_mm(7),
groff_mom(7),
groff_ms(7),
groff_rfc1345(7),
groff_trace(7),
and
groff_www(7)
are groff macro packages.
groff(7)
summarizes the language recognized by GNU troff.
troff(1)
documents the default macro file search path.
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 tarball groff-1.23.0.tar.gz fetched
from ⟨https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/⟩ on 2026-01-16. 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 2 July 2023 groff_tmac(5)
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HTML rendering created 2026-01-16 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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