grotty

GROTTY(1)                   General Commands Manual                  GROTTY(1)

NAME
       grotty - groff driver for typewriter-like devices

SYNOPSIS
       grotty [-bBcdfhioruUv] [-F dir] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
       grotty  translates  the  output  of  GNU troff into a form suitable for
       typewriter-like devices.  Normally grotty should be  invoked  by  using
       the  groff  command  with a -Tascii, -Tlatin1 or -Tutf8 option on ASCII
       based systems, and with -Tcp1047 and -Tutf8 on EBCDIC based hosts.   If
       no  files  are given, grotty reads the standard input.  A filename of -
       also causes grotty to read the standard input.  Output  is  written  to
       the standard output.

       By  default,  grotty  emits  SGR  escape sequences (from ISO 6429, also
       called ANSI color escapes) to change  text  attributes  (bold,  italic,
       colors).  This makes it possible to have eight different background and
       foreground colors; additionally, bold and italic attributes can be used
       at the same time (by using the BI font).

       The following colors are defined in tty.tmac: black, white, red, green,
       blue, yellow, magenta, cyan.  Unknown colors are mapped to the  default
       color  (which  is  dependent  on  the settings of the terminal; in most
       cases, this is black for the foreground and white for the background).

       Use the -c switch to revert to the old behaviour, printing a bold char-
       acter  c with the sequence "c BACKSPACE c" and an italic character c by
       the sequence "_ BACKSPACE c".  At the same time, color output  is  dis-
       abled.   The  same  effect  can  be  achieved  by  setting  either  the
       GROFF_NO_SGR environment variable or using the 'sgr' X command (see be-
       low).

       For  SGR  support,  it  is necessary to use the -R option of less(1) to
       disable the interpretation  of  grotty's  old  output  format.   Conse-
       quently,  all programs which use less as the pager program have to pass
       this option to it.  For man(1) in particular,  either  add  -R  to  the
       PAGER environment variable, e.g.

              PAGER="/usr/bin/less -R"
              export PAGER

       or  use  the  -P  option of man to set the pager executable and its op-
       tions, or modify the configuration file of man in  a  similar  fashion.
       Note that with some man(1) versions, you have to use the MANPAGER envi-
       ronment variable instead.

       grotty's old output format can be displayed on  a  terminal  by  piping
       through ul(1).  Pagers such as more(1) or less(1) are also able to dis-
       play these sequences.  Use either -B or -U when  piping  into  less(1);
       use -b when piping into more(1).  There is no need to filter the output
       through col(1) since grotty never outputs reverse line feeds.

       The font description file may contain a command

              internalname n

       where n is a decimal integer.  If the 01 bit in n is set, then the font
       is  treated as an italic font; if the 02 bit is set, then it is treated
       as a bold font.  The code field in the font description field gives the
       code which is used to output the character.  This code can also be used
       in the \N escape sequence in troff.

       If the DESC file contains the keyword  unicode,  grotty  emits  Unicode
       characters in UTF-8 encoding.  Otherwise, it emits characters in a sin-
       gle-byte encoding depending on the data in the font description  files.
       See the groff_font(5) man page for more details.

OPTIONS
       Whitespace is permitted between a command-line option and its argument.

       -b     Suppress  the  use of overstriking for bold characters.  Ignored
              if -c isn't used.

       -B     Use only overstriking for bold-italic characters.  Ignored if -c
              isn't used.

       -c     Use  grotty's old output format (see above).  This also disables
              color output.

       -d     Ignore all \D commands.  Without this  grotty  renders  \D'l...'
              commands that have at least one zero argument (and so are either
              horizontal or vertical) using -, |, and + characters.  In a sim-
              ilar  way,  grotty  handles  \D'p...' commands which consist en-
              tirely of horizontal and vertical lines.

       -f     Use form feeds in the output.  A form feed is output at the  end
              of each page that has no output on its last line.

       -Fdir  Prepend  directory  dir/devname  to the search path for font and
              device description files; name is the name of the  device,  usu-
              ally ascii, latin1, utf8, or cp1047.

       -h     Use  horizontal  tabs in the output.  Tabs are assumed to be set
              every 8 columns.

       -i     Use escape sequences to set the italic text attribute instead of
              the  underline  attribute for italic fonts ('I' and 'BI').  Note
              that most terminals (including xterm) don't support  this.   Ig-
              nored if -c is active.

       -o     Suppress overstriking (other than for bold or underlined charac-
              ters in case the old output format has been activated with -c).

       -r     Use escape sequences to set the reverse text  attribute  instead
              of the underline attribute for italic fonts ('I' and 'BI').  Ig-
              nored if -c is active.

       -u     Suppress the use of underlining for italic characters.   Ignored
              if -c isn't used.

       -U     Use  only underlining for bold-italic characters.  Ignored if -c
              isn't used.

       -v     Print the version number.

USAGE
       grotty understands a single X command produced using the \X escape  se-
       quence.

       \X'tty: sgr n'
              If  n is non-zero or missing, enable SGR output (this is the de-
              fault), otherwise use the old drawing scheme for bold and under-
              line.

ENVIRONMENT
       GROFF_NO_SGR
              If set, the old drawing scheme for bold and underline (using the
              backspace character) is active.  Colors are disabled.

       GROFF_FONT_PATH
              A list of directories in which to search for the devname  direc-
              tory  in  addition  to  the  default  ones.   See  troff(1)  and
              groff_font(5) for more details.

FILES
       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devascii/DESC
              Device description file for the ascii device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devascii/F
              Font description file for font F of the ascii device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devlatin1/DESC
              Device description file for the latin1 device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devlatin1/F
              Font description file for font F of the latin1 device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devutf8/DESC
              Device description file for the utf8 device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devutf8/F
              Font description file for font F of the utf8 device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devcp1047/DESC
              Device description file for the cp1047 device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devcp1047/F
              Font description file for font F of the cp1047 device.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/tty.tmac
              Macros for use with grotty.

       /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/tty-char.tmac
              Additional character definitions for use with grotty.

       Note that on EBCDIC hosts, only files for  the  cp1047  device  is  in-
       stalled.

BUGS
       grotty is intended only for simple documents.

       There is no support for fractional horizontal or vertical motions.

       There  is no support for \D commands other than horizontal and vertical
       lines.

       Characters above the first line (i.e. with a vertical  position  of  0)
       cannot be printed.

       Color  handling  differs  from grops(1).  \M doesn't set the fill color
       for closed graphic objects (which grotty doesn't  support  anyway)  but
       changes  the background color of the character cell, affecting all sub-
       sequent operations.

SEE ALSO
       groff(1), troff(1), groff_out(5), groff_font(5), groff_char(7),  ul(1),
       more(1), man(1), less(1)

groff 1.22.4                     21 March 2020                       GROTTY(1)