GROFF_MAN(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual GROFF_MAN(7)
groff_man - GNU roff macro package for formatting man pages
groff -man [options ...] [files ...]
groff -m man [options ...] [files ...]
The man macros used to generate man pages with groff were written by
James Clark. This document provides a brief summary of the use of
each macro in that package.
The man macros understand the following command-line options (which
define various registers).
-rcR=1 This option (the default if in nroff mode) creates a single,
very long page instead of multiple pages. Say -rcR=0 to
disable it.
-rC1 If more than one manual page is given on the command line,
number the pages continuously, rather than starting each at 1.
-rD1 Double-sided printing. Footers for even and odd pages are
formatted differently.
-rFT=dist
Set distance of the footer relative to the bottom of the page
if negative or relative to the top if positive. The default
is -0.5i.
-rHY=flags
Set hyphenation flags. Possible values are 1 to hyphenate
without restrictions, 2 to not hyphenate the last word on a
page, 4 to not hyphenate the last two characters of a word,
and 8 to not hyphenate the first two characters of a word.
These values are additive; the default is 14.
-rIN=width
Set body text indentation to width. The default is 7n for
nroff, 7.2n for troff. For nroff, this value should always be
an integer multiple of unit ‘n’ to get consistent indentation.
-rLL=line-length
Set line length. If this option is not given, the line length
is set to respect any value set by a prior ‘.ll’ request
(which must be in effect when the ‘.TH’ macro is invoked), if
this differs from the built-in default for the formatter;
otherwise it defaults to 78n in nroff mode and 6.5i in troff
mode.
Note that the use of a ‘.ll’ request to initialize the line
length is supported for backward compatibility with some
versions of the man program; direct initialization of the ‘LL’
register should always be preferred to the use of such a
request. In particular, note that a ‘.ll 65n’ request does
not preserve the normal nroff default line length, (the man
default initialization to 78n prevails), whereas, the
‘-rLL=65n’ option, or an equivalent ‘.nr LL 65n’ request
preceding the use of the ‘TH’ macro, does set a line length of
65n.
-rLT=title-length
Set title length. If this option is not given, the title
length defaults to the line length.
-rPnnn Enumeration of pages start with nnn rather than with 1.
-rSxx Base document font size is xx points (xx can be 10, 11, or 12)
rather than 10 points.
-rSN=width
Set sub-subheading indentation to width. The default is 3n.
-rXnnn After page nnn, number pages as nnna, nnnb, nnnc, etc. For
example, the option ‘-rX2’ produces the following page
numbers: 1, 2, 2a, 2b, 2c, etc.
This section describes the available macros for manual pages. For
further customization, put additional macros and requests into the
file man.local, which is loaded immediately after the man package.
.EX
.EE Example/End Example. After .EX, filling is disabled and the
font is set to constant-width. This is useful for formatting
code, command, and configuration-file examples. The EE macro
restores filling and restores the previous font.
These macros are defined on many (but not all) legacy Unix
systems running classic troff. To be certain your page will
be portable to those systems, copy their definitions from the
an-ext.tmac file of a groff installation.
.HP [nnn]
Set up a paragraph with hanging left indentation. The
indentation is set to nnn if that argument is supplied (the
default unit is ‘n’ if omitted), otherwise it is set to the
previous indentation value specified with .TP, .IP, or .HP (or
to the default value if none of them have been used yet).
Font size and face are reset to its default values. The
following paragraph illustrates the effect of this macro with
hanging indentation set to 4 (enclosed by .RS and .RE to set
the left margin temporarily to the current indentation):
This is a paragraph following an invocation of the HP macro.
As you can see, it produces a paragraph where all lines
but the first are indented.
Use of this presentation-level macro is deprecated. While it
is universally portable to legacy Unix systems, a hanging
indentation cannot be expressed naturally under HTML, and many
HTML-based manual viewers simply interpret it as a starter for
a normal paragraph. Thus, any information or distinction you
tried to express with the indentation may be lost.
.IP [designator] [nnn]
Set up an indented paragraph, using designator as a tag to
mark its beginning. The indentation is set to nnn if that
argument is supplied (the default unit is ‘n’ if omitted),
otherwise it is set to the previous indentation value
specified with .TP, .IP, or .HP (or to the default value if
none of them have been used yet). Font size and face of the
paragraph (but not the designator) are reset to its default
values.
To start an indented paragraph with a particular indentation
but without a designator, use ‘""’ (two doublequotes) as the
second argument.
For example, the following paragraphs were all set up with
bullets as the designator, using ‘.IP \(bu 4’. The whole
block has been enclosed with .RS and .RE to set the left
margin temporarily to the current indentation value.
· IP is one of the three macros used in the man package to
format lists.
· HP is another. This macro produces a paragraph with a
left hanging indentation.
· TP is another. This macro produces an unindented label
followed by an indented paragraph.
.LP
.PP
.P These macros are mutual aliases. Any of them causes a line
break at the current position, followed by a vertical space
downwards by the amount specified by the PD macro. The font
size and shape are reset to the default value (normally 10pt
Roman). Finally, the current left margin and the indentation
is reset to the default values.
.RE [nnn]
This macro moves the left margin back to level nnn, restoring
the previous left margin. If no argument is given, it moves
one level back. The first level (i.e., no call to .RS yet)
has number 1, and each call to .RS increases the level by 1.
.RS [nnn]
This macro moves the left margin to the right by the value nnn
if specified (default unit is ‘n’); otherwise it is set to the
previous indentation value specified with .TP, .IP, or .HP (or
to the default value if none of them have been used yet). The
indentation value is then set to the default.
Calls to the RS macro can be nested.
.SH [text for a heading]
Set up an unnumbered section heading sticking out to the left.
Prints out all the text following .SH up to the end of the
line (or the text in the next input line if there is no
argument to .SH) in bold face (or the font specified by the
string HF), one size larger than the base document size.
Additionally, the left margin and the indentation for the
following text is reset to the default values.
.SS [text for a heading]
Set up a secondary, unnumbered section heading. Prints out
all the text following .SS up to the end of the line (or the
text in the next input line if there is no argument to .SS) in
bold face (or the font specified by the string HF), at the
same size as the base document size. Additionally, the left
margin and the indentation for the following text is reset to
the default values.
.TH title section [extra1] [extra2] [extra3]
Set the title of the man page to title and the section to
section, which must take on a value between 1 and 8. The
value section may also have a string appended, e.g. ‘.pm’, to
indicate a specific subsection of the man pages. Both title
and section are positioned at the left and right in the header
line (with section in parentheses immediately appended to
title. extra1 is positioned in the middle of the footer line.
extra2 is positioned at the left in the footer line (or at the
left on even pages and at the right on odd pages if double-
sided printing is active). extra3 is centered in the header
line.
For HTML output, headers and footers are completely
suppressed.
Additionally, this macro starts a new page; the new line
number is 1 again (except if the ‘-rC1’ option is given on the
command line) -- this feature is intended only for formatting
multiple man pages; a single man page should contain exactly
one TH macro at the beginning of the file.
.TP [nnn]
Set up an indented paragraph with label. The indentation is
set to nnn if that argument is supplied (the default unit is
‘n’ if omitted), otherwise it is set to the previous
indentation value specified with .TP, .IP, or .HP (or to the
default value if none of them have been used yet).
The first input line of text following this macro is
interpreted as a string to be printed flush-left, as it is
appropriate for a label. It is not interpreted as part of a
paragraph, so there is no attempt to fill the first line with
text from the following input lines. Nevertheless, if the
label is not as wide as the indentation the paragraph starts
at the same line (but indented), continuing on the following
lines. If the label is wider than the indentation the
descriptive part of the paragraph begins on the line following
the label, entirely indented. Note that neither font shape
nor font size of the label is set to a default value; on the
other hand, the rest of the text has default font settings.
The TP macro is the macro used for the explanations you are
just reading.
.TQ The TQ macro sets up header continuation for a TP macro. With
it, you can stack up any number of labels (such as in a
glossary, or list of commands) before beginning the indented
paragraph. For an example, look up the documentation of the
LP, PP, and P macros.
This macro is not defined on legacy Unix systems running
classic troff. To be certain your page will be portable to
those systems, copy its definition from the an-ext.tmac file
of a groff installation.
To summarize, the following macros cause a line break with the
insertion of vertical space (which amount can be changed with the PD
macro): SH, SS, TP, TQ, LP (PP, P), IP, and HP. The macros RS, RE,
EX, and EE also cause a break but no insertion of vertical space.
The standard font is Roman; the default text size is 10 point.
.B [text]
Causes text to appear in bold face. If no text is present on
the line where the macro is called the text of the next input
line appears in bold face.
.BI text
Causes text on the same line to appear alternately in bold
face and italic. The text must be on the same line as the
macro call. Thus
.BI this "word and" that
would cause ‘this’ and ‘that’ to appear in bold face, while
‘word and’ appears in italics.
.BR text
Causes text on the same line to appear alternately in bold
face and roman. The text must be on the same line as the
macro call.
.I [text]
Causes text to appear in italic. If no text is present on the
line where the macro is called the text of the next input line
appears in italic.
.IB text
Causes text to appear alternately in italic and bold face.
The text must be on the same line as the macro call.
.IR text
Causes text on the same line to appear alternately in italic
and roman. The text must be on the same line as the macro
call.
.RB text
Causes text on the same line to appear alternately in roman
and bold face. The text must be on the same line as the macro
call.
.RI text
Causes text on the same line to appear alternately in roman
and italic. The text must be on the same line as the macro
call.
.SB [text]
Causes the text on the same line or the text on the next input
line to appear in boldface font, one point size smaller than
the default font.
.SM [text]
Causes the text on the same line or the text on the next input
line to appear in a font that is one point size smaller than
the default font.
The following macros are not defined on legacy Unix systems running
classic troff. To be certain your page will be portable to those
systems, copy their definitions from the an-ext.tmac file of a groff
installation.
Using these macros helps ensure that you get hyperlinks when your
manual page is rendered in a browser or other program that is Web-
enabled.
.MT address
.ME [punctuation]
Wrap an email address. The argument of .MT is the address;
text following, until .ME, is a name to be associated with the
address. Any argument to the ME macro is pasted to the end of
the link text. On a device that is not a browser,
contact
.MT fred.foonly@\:fubar.net
Fred Foonly
.ME
for more information
usually displays like this: “contact Fred Foonly <fred.foonly@
fubar.net> for more information”.
The use of \: to insert hyphenless breakpoints is a groff
extension and can be omitted.
.UR URL
.UE [punctuation]
Wrap a World Wide Web hyperlink. The argument to .UR is the
URL; thereafter, lines until .UE are collected and used as the
link text. Any argument to the UE macro is pasted to the end
of the text. On a device that is not a browser,
this is a link to
.UR http://\:randomsite.org/\:fubar
some random site
.UE ,
given as an example
usually displays like this: “this is a link to some random
site ⟨http://randomsite.org/fubar⟩, given as an example”.
The use of \: to insert hyphenless breakpoints is a groff
extension and can be omitted.
The following macros are not defined on legacy Unix systems running
classic troff. To be certain your page will be portable to those
systems, copy their definitions from the an-ext.tmac file of a groff
installation.
These macros are a convenience for authors. They also assist
automated translation tools and help browsers in recognizing command
synopses and treating them differently from running text.
.OP key value
Describe an optional command argument. The arguments of this
macro are set surrounded by option braces in the default Roman
font; the first argument is printed with a bold face, while
the second argument is typeset as italic.
.SY command
Begin synopsis. Takes a single argument, the name of a
command. Text following, until closed by .YS, is set with a
hanging indentation with the width of command plus a space.
This produces the traditional look of a Unix command synopsis.
.YS This macro restores normal indentation at the end of a command
synopsis.
Here is a real example:
.SY groff
.OP \-abcegiklpstzCEGNRSUVXZ
.OP \-d cs
.OP \-f fam
.OP \-F dir
.OP \-I dir
.OP \-K arg
.OP \-L arg
.OP \-m name
.OP \-M dir
.OP \-n num
.OP \-o list
.OP \-P arg
.OP \-r cn
.OP \-T dev
.OP \-w name
.OP \-W name
.RI [ file
.IR .\|.\|. ]
.YS
produces the following output:
groff [-abcegiklpstzCEGNRSUVXZ] [-d cs] [-f fam] [-F dir]
[-I dir] [-K arg] [-L arg] [-m name] [-M dir] [-n num]
[-o list] [-P arg] [-r cn] [-T dev] [-w name] [-W name]
[file ...]
If necessary, you might use br requests to control line breaking.
You can insert plain text as well; this looks like the traditional
(unornamented) syntax for a required command argument or filename.
The default indentation is 7.2n in troff mode and 7n in nroff mode
except for grohtml, which ignores indentation.
.AT [system [release]]
Alter the footer for use with AT&T man pages. This command
exists only for compatibility; don't use it. See the groff
info manual for more.
.BT Print the footer string. Redefine this macro to get control
of the footer.
.DT Set tabs every 0.5 inches. Since this macro is always called
during a TH macro, it makes sense to call it only if the tab
positions have been changed.
Use of this presentation-level macro is deprecated. It
translates poorly to HTML, under which exact whitespace
control and tabbing are not readily available. Thus,
information or distinctions that you use .DT to express are
likely to be lost. If you feel tempted to use it, you should
probably be composing a table using tbl(1) markup instead.
.PD [nnn]
Adjust the empty space before a new paragraph or section. The
optional argument gives the amount of space (default unit is
‘v’); without parameter, the value is reset to its default
value (1 line in nroff mode, 0.4v otherwise). This affects
the macros SH, SS, TP, LP (resp. PP and P), IP, and HP.
Use of this presentation-level macro is deprecated. It
translates poorly to HTML, under which exact control of inter-
paragraph spacing is not readily available. Thus, information
or distinctions that you use .PD to express are likely to be
lost.
.PT Print the header string. Redefine this macro to get control
of the header.
.UC [version]
Alter the footer for use with BSD man pages. This command
exists only for compatibility; don't use it. See the groff
info manual for more.
The following strings are defined:
\*R The ‘registered’ sign.
\*S Switch back to the default font size.
\*(lq
\*(rq Left and right quote. This is equal to ‘\(lq’ and ‘\(rq’,
respectively.
\*(HF The typeface used to print headings and subheadings. The
default is ‘B’.
\*(Tm The ‘trademark’ sign.
If a preprocessor like tbl or eqn is needed, it has become common to
make the first line of the man page look like this:
'\" word
Note the single space character after the double quote. word
consists of letters for the needed preprocessors: ‘e’ for eqn, ‘r’
for refer, and ‘t’ for tbl. Modern implementations of the man
program read this first line and automatically call the right
preprocessor(s).
Since the man macros consist of groups of groff requests, one can, in
principle, supplement the functionality of the man macros with
individual groff requests where necessary. See the groff info pages
for a complete reference of all requests.
Note, however, that using raw troff requests is likely to make your
page render poorly on the class of viewers that transform it to HTML.
Troff requests make implicit assumptions about things like character
and page sizes that may break in an HTML environment; also, many of
these viewers don't interpret the full troff vocabulary, a problem
that can lead to portions of your text being silently dropped.
For portability to modern viewers, it is best to write your page
entirely in the requests described on this page. Further, it is best
to completely avoid those we have described as ‘presentation-level’
(.HP, .PD, and .DT).
The macros we have described as extensions (.EX/.EE, .SY/.OP/.YS,
.UR/.UE, and .MT/.ME) should be used with caution, as they may not
yet be built in to some viewer that is important to your audience.
If in doubt, copy the implementation onto your page.
In a way similar to using groff requests, it is possible to use the
facilities documented in the ESCAPE SEQUENCES section of the groff(7)
manual page and in the groff_char(7) manual page. Regarding
portability, similar caveats apply as with respect to groff requests.
Some escape sequences are however required for correct typesetting
even in manual pages and usually do not cause portability problems:
"\ " Unpaddable non-breaking space character. (The double-quotes
are to make the presence of the space character clear in this
document, and are not necessary in the input file.) Useful
for preventing breaking between a numerical quantity and its
corresponding unit(s), for instance:
There are 2.54\ cm in an inch, and 1,024\ bytes in 1\ kiB.
\& Zero-width space. Append to an input line to prevent an end-
of-sentence punctuation sequence from being recognized as
such, or insert at the beginning of an input line to prevent a
dot or apostrophe from being interpreted as the beginning of a
roff request.
\(aq ASCII apostrophe. Useful for syntax elements of programming
languages because some output devices might replace unescaped
apostrophes with right single quotation marks.
\(oq Opening single quotation mark.
\(cq Closing single quotation mark.
Use these for paired directional single quotes, ‘like this’.
\(dq ASCII double-quote. Sometimes needed on macro lines to pre‐
vent the interpretation of the ASCII quotation mark character
‘"’ as the beginning or end of a macro argument.
\(lq Left double quotation mark.
\(rq Right double quotation mark.
Use these for paired directional double quotes, “like this”.
\(em Em-dash. Used as a punctuation mark for an interruption in a
sentence—like in this one.
\(en En-dash. Used to separate the two ends of a range, in partic‐
ular between numbers, for example: the digits 1–9.
\(ga ASCII grave accent. Useful for syntax elements of programming
languages, for example shell command substitutions, because
some output devices might replace unescaped grave accents with
left single quotation marks.
\(ha ASCII circumflex accent. Useful for syntax elements of pro‐
gramming languages because some output devices might replace
unescaped circumflex accents with non-ASCII glyphs like the
Unicode U+02C6 modifier letter circumflex.
\(ti ASCII tilde. Useful for syntax elements of programming lan‐
guages because some output devices might replace unescaped
tildes with non-ASCII glyphs like the Unicode U+02DC small
tilde.
\- Minus sign. Also use this to display syntax elements that
require the ASCII hyphen-minus character, for example command-
line options and C language operators. The unescaped ‘-’
input character is not appropriate for these cases because it
may render as a hyphen on some output devices.
\c If this escape sequence occurs at the end of an input line, no
white space is inserted between the last glyph on it and the
first glyph resulting from the next input line. This is occa‐
sionally useful when three different fonts are needed in a
single word, for example:
.BR "dd if" =\c
.I file
Alternatively, and perhaps with better portability, the \f
font escape sequence can be used; see below.
Attempting to use \c to include the output from more than one
macro line into the head of a .TP macro will misrender with
groff-1.22.3, mandoc-1.14.1, older versions of these programs,
and perhaps with some other formatters.
\e Widely used in manual pages to represent a backslash output
glyph. It works reliably as long as the .ec request is not
used, which should never happen in manual pages, and it is
slightly more portable than the more exact \(rs (“reverse
solidus”) escape sequence.
\fB, \fI, \fR, \fP
Switch to bold, italic, roman, or back to the previous font,
respectively. This is needed when three different fonts are
required on a single input line, for example:
.TP
\fBif\fP=\fIfile\fP
It can also be used if three different fonts are needed in a
single word. It may be more portable than \c.
As long as only two fonts are needed, using font alternation
macros like .BR usually results in more readable source code.
For maximum portability, escape sequences and special characters not
listed above are better avoided in manual pages.
man.tmac
an.tmac
These are wrapper files to call andoc.tmac.
andoc.tmac
Use this file in case you don't know whether the man macros or
the mdoc package should be used. Multiple man pages (in
either format) can be handled.
an-old.tmac
Most man macros are contained in this file.
an-ext.tmac
The extension macro definitions for .SY, .OP, .YS, .TQ,
.EX/.EE, .UR/.UE, and .MT/.ME are contained in this file. It
is written in classic troff, and released for free re-use, and
not copylefted; manual page authors concerned about
portability to legacy Unix systems are encouraged to copy
these definitions into their pages, and maintainers of troff
or its workalikes are encouraged to re-use them.
Note that the definitions for these macros are read after the
call of TH, so they will replace macros of the same names
given at the beginning of your file. If you must use your own
definitions for these macros, they must be given after calling
TH.
man.local
Local changes and customizations should be put into this file.
The GNU version of the man macro package was written by James Clark
and contributors. The extension macros were written by Werner
Lemberg ⟨wl@gnu.org⟩ and Eric S. Raymond ⟨esr@thyrsus.com⟩.
This document was originally written for the Debian GNU/Linux system
by Susan G. Kleinmann ⟨sgk@debian.org⟩. It was corrected and updated
by Werner Lemberg. The extension macros were documented (and partly
designed) by Eric S. Raymond; he also originated the portability
advice.
tbl(1), eqn(1), refer(1), man(1), man(7), groff_mdoc(7)
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 2018-02-02. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the repos‐
itory was 2018-02-02.) 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 Version 1.22.3 24 November 2017 GROFF_MAN(7)
Pages that refer to this page: groff(1), groff_tmac(5), man(7), man-pages(7)
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