nroff(1) — Linux manual page

nroff(1)                 General Commands Manual                nroff(1)

Name

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

Synopsis

       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

       nroff formats documents written in the groff(7) language for
       typewriter-like devices such as terminal emulators.  GNU nroff
       emulates the AT&T nroff command using groff(1).  nroff generates
       output via grotty(1), 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 locale(1) 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 troff(1).  -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
       GNU nroff).  The options -k, -K, -p, -P, -R, -t, and -S are
       documented in groff(1).  -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

       nroff exits with 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

       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
              Locate groff commands in these directories, followed by
              those in PATH.  If not set, the installation directory of
              GNU roff executables, /usr/local/bin, is searched before
              PATH.

       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

       /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 than those of tty.tmac in favor of
              communicating semantic information.  nroff loads it
              automatically.

Notes

       Pager programs like more(1) and less(1) may require command-line
       options to correctly handle some output sequences; see grotty(1).

See also

       groff(1), troff(1), grotty(1), locale(1), roff(7)

COLOPHON

       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 2024-06-14.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2024-06-10.)  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 1.23.0.1273-9d53-dirty   6 June 2024                      nroff(1)

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

---