Groff examples repository

Last-Updated: 2024-12-19

This is a compilation of groff examples shared on the mailing list or detailed in the different man pages. This is aimed to be a collection of hacks and full documents edited with Groff.

If you want to learn to use groff, see the following book (from the UTP revival project) or the official documentation linked lower down the page.

• Unix Text Processing
  
• UTP revival project
  

Examples

Page modifications

• Drawing crop marks
  
• Page borders for mom macros
  
• Presentations with Groff and AcroRead
  
• Typesetting two languages on facing pages
  
• Dynamic paper length
  

Text operations

• Text in the colour of your choosing
  
• Inserting an image inline with .char
  
• Showing hyphenation points
  
• Finding the position of a character in a string
  
• Reflowing the text for optimum configuration
  
• Upside down or mirrored text
  
• Wrapping multiples lines in a table of contents
  
• Typesetting arbitrary fractions
  
• Getting current time inside groff
  
• Underlining for everyone
  

Drawing diagrams, graphics, etc.

• A program for typesetting data formats
  
• A one page dungeon layout
  
• Business graphs with busgrap
  
• Extending pic with PostScript
  
• Making a Venn diagram with pic and PostScript
  
• Add support for arbitrary polygons in pic
  

Table operations

• Gray background on alternate rows
  

Bibliography tools

• Getting APA-style references with refer
  
• Searching a bibliography database
  

Advanced operations

• Executing PostScript code in a groff document
  
• Macro sets to typeset whole documents
  
• Recursion and iteration
  
• Translating V7 troff output to PostScript
  
• A version of fmt for troff files
  
• MORE.STUFF a list of programs developed by third parties
  

Documents edited with groff

• Presentation at EuroBSDCon 2018 by Ingo Schwarze
  
• The Moyal-Dirac controversy revisited
  
• Presentation at DECON 2019 by Robert Marks
  

Official documentation

You can find the official documentation in the Groff Info manual with `info groff` or at the following link:

• Groff Info manual
  

If you prefer man pages, the main ones − 52 of them − have been compiled in the following document, courtesy of Deri James.

• Groff − The man pages book
  

The following subset are especially interesting to any new user of groff:

• groff(1) - front-end for the groff document formatting system
• refer(1) - preprocess bibliographic references for groff
• pic(1) - compile pictures for troff or TeX
• groff(7) - a short reference for the GNU roff language
• groff_tmac(5) - macro files in the roff typesetting system
• groff_char(7) - groff glyph names
• groff_man(7) - GNU roff macro package for formatting man pages
• groff_mdoc(7) - reference for groff's mdoc implementation
• groff_me(7) - "me" macro package for formatting documents with GNU roff
• groff_mm(7) - memorandum macros for GNU roff
• groff_mom(7) - groff "mom" macros; "mom" is a "roff" language, part of "groff"
• groff_ms(7) - GNU roff manuscript macro package for formatting documents
• groff_www(7) - groff macros for authoring web pages

For advanced topics, if you use a UNIX-like operating system, chances are your groff install came with documentation in one of the following directories:

• /usr/local/share/doc/groff/ or
• /usr/share/doc/groff/ or
• /usr/share/doc/groff-base/.

Official project pages

Linked below, you can find the project page of groff, of mandoc and of mdoc.

• GNU troff (groff) — a GNU project
  
• mandoc tools used for BSD manual pages
  
• Documentation for the mdoc language
  

Contact

If you think a macro should be in this list, if you found a mistake or care to give some feedback, send me an email: thomas AT dupond DOT eu.