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groff
?groff
(GNU roff
) is a typesetting system that reads plain
text input that includes formatting commands to produce output in
PostScript, PDF, HTML, or other formats, or for display to a terminal.
Formatting commands can be low-level typesetting primitives, macros from
a supplied package, or user-defined macros. All three approaches can be
combined.
A reimplementation and extension of troff
and other programs
from AT&T Unix, groff
is widely available on
POSIX and other systems owing to its long association with
Unix manuals, including man pages. It and its predecessor have produced
several best-selling software engineering texts. groff
can
create typographically sophisticated documents while consuming minimal
system resources.
The architecture of the GNU roff
system follows that of other
device-independent roff
implementations, comprising
preprocessors, macro packages, output drivers (or “postprocessors”),
and a suite of utilities, with the formatter program troff
at
its heart.
The groff
front end program makes the GNU roff
system
easier to use than traditional roff
s that required the
construction of pipelines or use of temporary files to carry a source
document from maintainable form to device-ready output.