README
1README
2
3The 'groffer' program is the easiest way to read documents written in
4some 'roff' language, such as the 'man pages', the manual pages in
5many operating systems. All 'roff' preprocessors, such as 'chem' or
6'glilypond', are detected and executed automatically.
7
8
9Input
10
11Input comes from either standard input or command-line parameters that
12represent names of exisiting roff files or standardized specifications
13for searching man pages. All of these can be compressed in a format
14that is decompressible by 'gzip' or 'bzip2', including '.gz', 'bz2',
15and '.Z'.
16
17'groffer' has many built-in 'man' functionalities to find and read the
18manual pages on Unix and similar operating systems. It accepts the
19information from an installed 'man' program, but tries to find a man
20path by itself.
21
22'groffer' bundles all filespec parameters into a single output file in
23the same way as 'groff'. The disadvantage of this is that all file
24name arguments must use the same groff language. To change this, the
25option parsing must be revised for large parts. It seems that this
26would create incompatibilities, so the actual option strategy is kept.
27
28
29Output
30
31All input is first sent to 'grog' to determine the necessary 'groff'
32command and then to 'groff' together with all necessary preprocessors.
33So no special 'groff' arguments must be given. But all 'groff'
34options can be specified when this seems to be appropriate.
35
36The following displaying modes for the output are available:
37- Display formatted input with
38-- a PDF viewer,
39-- a Postcript viewer,
40-- a web browser,
41-- the X 'roff' viewer 'gxditview',
42-- a DVI viewer,
43-- a pager in a text terminal (tty).
44- Generate 'groff' output on stdout without a viewer.
45- Generate the 'groff intermediate output' on standard output without
46 postprocessing.
47- Output the source code without any 'groff' processing.
48- There are some information outputs without 'groff' processing, such
49 as by option '-V' and the 'man' like 'whatis' and 'apropos'
50 outputs.
51
52By default, the program creates a PDF file; on non-X text terminals,
53the 'tty' text mode with a pager is tried by default.
54
55
56File access
57
58The Perl version of groffer now uses a umask of 077. This is a very
59strict security issue. It allows only access of the temporary files
60by the file owner.
61
62
63Compatibility
64
65'groffer' is compatible to the 'man' program. It supports '.so'
66requests based on the man path and compressed files. That's more than
67'groff' does.
68
69
70Reporting bugs
71
72For reporting bugs of 'groffer', groff's bug-tracking tool at
73http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=groff can be used.
74
75
76Mailing list
77
78For a general discussion, the mailing list <groff@gnu.org> is
79useful, but one has to subscribe to this list at
80http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff.
81
82See the 'README' file in the top directory of the 'groff' source
83package for more details on this mailing list.
84
85
86####### License
87
88Copyright (C) 2003-2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
89Written by Bernd Warken <groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de>.
90
91This file is part of 'groffer', which is part of 'groff'.
92
93'groff' is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
94under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
95the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or
96(at your option) any later version.
97
98'groff' is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
99ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
100FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
101for more details.
102
103You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
104along with this program. If not, see
105<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html>.
106
107
108####### Emacs settings
109
110Local Variables:
111mode: text
112End:
113
README_PERL
1README_PERL
2
3'groffer' is written in the programming language Perl.
4
5
6Compatibility
7
8It was written in Linux, but due to Free Software under GNU it is
9available for each operating system.
10
11For testing, 'groffer.pl' may be used directly without a Makefile. By
12'make', this file will be transformed into the file 'groffer' that will
13be installed.
14
15
16Temporary files
17
18The 'file' and 'so' temporaries are numbered and the files with .so
19request are copied. All .so requests are handled; this is an
20extension to 'man' that deals only with the first .so request.
21
22
23####### License
24
25Copyright (C) 2003-2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
26Written by Bernd Warken <groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de>.
27
28This file is part of 'groffer', which is part of 'groff'.
29
30'groff' is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
31under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
32the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or
33(at your option) any later version.
34
35'groff' is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
36ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
37FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
38for more details.
39
40You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
41along with this program. If not, see
42<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html>.
43
44
45####### Emacs settings
46
47Local Variables:
48mode: text
49End:
50