gropdf(1) General Commands Manual gropdf(1)
Name
gropdf - groff output driver for Portable Document Format
Synopsis
gropdf [-dels] [-F font-directory] [-I inclusion-directory]
[-p paper-format] [-u [cmap-file]] [-y foundry] [file ...]
gropdf --help
gropdf -v
gropdf --version
Description
The GNU roff PDF output driver translates the output of troff(1) into
Portable Document Format. Normally, gropdf is invoked by groff(1) when
the latter is given the "-T pdf" option. (In this installation, ps is
the default output device.) Use groff's -P option to pass any options
shown above to gropdf. If no file arguments are given, or if file is
"-", gropdf reads the standard input stream. Output is written to the
standard output stream.
See section "Font installation" below for a guide to installing fonts
for gropdf.
Options
--help displays a usage message, while -v and --version show version
information; all exit afterward.
-d Include debug information as comments within the PDF. Also
produces an uncompressed PDF.
-e Forces gropdf to embed all fonts (even the 14 base PDF fonts).
-F dir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for font, and
device description files; name is the name of the device,
usually pdf.
-I dir Search the directory dir for files named in \X'pdf: pdfpic'
device control commands. -I may be specified more than once;
each dir is searched in the given order. To search the current
working directory before others, add "-I ." at the desired
place; it is otherwise searched last.
-l Orient the document in landscape format.
-p paper-format
Set the physical dimensions of the output medium. This
overrides the papersize, paperlength, and paperwidth directives
in the DESC file; it accepts the same arguments as the papersize
directive. See groff_font(5) for details.
-s Append a comment line to end of PDF showing statistics, i.e.
number of pages in document. Ghostscript's ps2pdf complains
about this line if it is included, but works anyway.
-u [cmap-file]
gropdf normally includes a ToUnicode CMap with any font created
using text.enc as the encoding file, this makes it easier to
search for words which contain ligatures. You can include your
own CMap by specifying a cmap-file or have no CMap at all by
omitting the argument.
-y foundry
Set the foundry to use for selecting fonts of the same name.
Usage
The input to gropdf must be in the format output by troff(1). This is
described in groff_out(5). In addition, the device and font
description files for the device used must meet certain requirements:
The resolution must be an integer multiple of 72 times the sizescale.
The pdf device uses a resolution of 72000 and a sizescale of 1000.
The device description file must contain a valid paper format; see
groff_font(5). gropdf uses the same Type 1 Adobe PostScript fonts as
the grops device driver. Although the PDF Standard allows the use of
other font types (like TrueType) this implementation only accepts the
Type 1 PostScript font. Fewer Type 1 fonts are supported natively in
PDF documents than the standard 35 fonts supported by grops and all
PostScript printers, but all the fonts are available since any which
aren't supported natively are automatically embedded in the PDF.
gropdf supports the concept of foundries, that is different versions of
basically the same font. During install a Foundry file controls where
fonts are found and builds groff fonts from the files it discovers on
your system.
Each font description file must contain a command
internalname psname
which says that the PostScript name of the font is psname. Lines
starting with # and blank lines are ignored. The code for each
character given in the font file must correspond to the code in the
default encoding for the font. This code can be used with the \N
escape sequence in troff to select the character, even if the character
does not have a groff name. Every character in the font file must
exist in the PostScript font, and the widths given in the font file
must match the widths used in the PostScript font.
Note that gropdf is currently only able to display the first 256 glyphs
in any font. This restriction will be lifted in a later version.
gropdf can automatically include the downloadable fonts necessary to
print the document. Fonts may be in PFA or PFB format.
Any downloadable fonts which should, when required, be included by
gropdf must be listed in the file /opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/
devpdf/download; this should consist of lines of the form
foundry font filename
where foundry is the foundry name or blank for the default foundry.
font is the PostScript name of the font, and filename is the name of
the file containing the font; lines beginning with # and blank lines
are ignored; fields must be separated by tabs (spaces are not allowed);
filename is searched for using the same mechanism that is used for
groff font metric files. The download file itself is also sought using
this mechanism. Foundry names are usually a single character (such as
`U' for the URW foundry) or empty for the default foundry. This
default uses the same fonts as ghostscript uses when it embeds fonts in
a PDF file.
In the default setup there are styles called R, I, B, and BI mounted at
font positions 1 to 4. The fonts are grouped into families A, BM, C,
H, HN, N, P, and T having members in each of these styles:
AR AvantGarde-Book
AI AvantGarde-BookOblique
AB AvantGarde-Demi
ABI AvantGarde-DemiOblique
BMR Bookman-Light
BMI Bookman-LightItalic
BMB Bookman-Demi
BMBI Bookman-DemiItalic
CR Courier
CI Courier-Oblique
CB Courier-Bold
CBI Courier-BoldOblique
HR Helvetica
HI Helvetica-Oblique
HB Helvetica-Bold
HBI Helvetica-BoldOblique
HNR Helvetica-Narrow
HNI Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique
HNB Helvetica-Narrow-Bold
HNBI Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique
NR NewCenturySchlbk-Roman
NI NewCenturySchlbk-Italic
NB NewCenturySchlbk-Bold
NBI NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic
PR Palatino-Roman
PI Palatino-Italic
PB Palatino-Bold
PBI Palatino-BoldItalic
TR Times-Roman
TI Times-Italic
TB Times-Bold
TBI Times-BoldItalic
There is also the following font which is not a member of a family:
ZCMI ZapfChancery-MediumItalic
There are also some special fonts called S for the PS Symbol font. The
lower case greek characters are automatically slanted (to match the
SymbolSlanted font (SS) available to PostScript). Zapf Dingbats is
available as ZD; the "hand pointing left" glyph (\[lh]) is available
since it has been defined using the \X'pdf: xrev' device control
command, which reverses the direction of letters within words.
The default color for \m and \M is black.
gropdf understands some of the device control commands supported by
grops(1).
\X'ps: invis'
Suppress output.
\X'ps: endinvis'
Stop suppressing output.
\X'ps: exec gsave currentpoint 2 copy translate n rotate neg exch neg
exch translate'
where n is the angle of rotation. This is to support the align
command in pic(1).
\X'ps: exec grestore'
Used by pic(1) to restore state after rotation.
\X'ps: exec n setlinejoin'
where n can be one of the following values.
0 = Miter join
1 = Round join
2 = Bevel join
\X'ps: exec n setlinecap'
where n can be one of the following values.
0 = Butt cap
1 = Round cap, and
2 = Projecting square cap
\X'ps: ... pdfmark'
All the pdfmark macros installed by using -m pdfmark or -m mspdf
(see documentation in pdfmark.pdf). A subset of these macros
are installed automatically when you use -Tpdf so you should not
need to use "-m pdfmark" to access most PDF functionality.
gropdf also supports a subset of the commands introduced in
present.tmac. Specifically it supports:-
PAUSE
BLOCKS
BLOCKE
Which allows you to create presentation type PDFs. Many of the other
commands are already available in other macro packages.
These commands are implemented with groff X commands:-
\X'ps: exec %%%%PAUSE'
The section before this is treated as a block and is introduced
using the current BLOCK transition setting (see "\X'pdf:
transition'" below). Equivalently, .pdfpause is available as a
macro.
\X'ps: exec %%%%BEGINONCE'
Any text following this command (up to %%%%ENDONCE) is shown
only once, the next %%%%PAUSE will remove it. If producing a
non-presentation PDF, i.e. ignoring the pauses, see
GROPDF_NOSLIDE below, this text is ignored.
\X'ps: exec %%%%ENDONCE'
This terminates the block defined by %%%%BEGINONCE. This pair
of commands is what implements the .BLOCKS Once/.BLOCKE commands
in present.tmac.
The mom macro package already integrates these extensions, so you can
build slides with mom.
If you use present.tmac with gropdf there is no need to run the program
presentps(1) since the output will already be a presentation PDF.
All other ps: tags are silently ignored.
One \X device control command used by the DVI driver is also
recognised.
\X'papersize=paper-format'
where the paper-format parameter is the same as that to the
papersize directive. See groff_font(5). This means that you
can alter the page size at will within the PDF file being
created by gropdf. If you do want to change the paper format,
it must be done before you start creating the page.
gropdf supports several more device control features using the pdf:
tag. Some have counterpart convenience macros that take the same
arguments and behave equivalently.
\X'pdf: pdfpic file alignment width height line-length'
Place an image of the specified width containing the PDF drawing
from file file of desired width and height (if height is missing
or zero then it is scaled proportionally). If alignment is -L
the drawing is left-aligned. If it is -C or -R a line-length
greater than the width of the drawing is required as well. If
width is specified as zero then the width is scaled in
proportion to the height.
\X'pdf: xrev'
Toggle the reversal of glyph direction. This feature works
"letter by letter", that is, each letter in a word is reversed
left-to-right, not the entire word. One application is the
reversal of glyphs in the Zapf Dingbats font. To restore the
normal glyph orientation, repeat the command.
\X'pdf: markstart /ANN-definition'
\X'pdf: markend'
Macros that support PDF bookmarks use these calls internally to
start and stop (respectively) the placement of the bookmark's
hot spot; the user will have called ".pdfhref L" with the text
of the hot spot. Normally, these are never used except from
within the pdfmark macros.
\X'pdf: marksuspend'
\X'pdf: markrestart'
If you use a page location trap to produce a header or footer,
or otherwise interrupt a document's text, you need to use these
commands if a PDF hot spot crosses a trap boundary; otherwise
any text output by the trap will be marked as part of the hot
spot. To prevent this error, place these device control
commands or their corresponding convenience macros
.pdfmarksuspend and .pdfmarkrestart at the start and end of the
trap macro, respectively.
\X'pdf: pagename name'
Assign the current page a name. All documents bear two default
names, `top' and `bottom'. The convenience macro for this
command is .pdfpagename.
\X'pdf: switchtopage when name'
Normally each new page is appended to the end of the document,
this command allows following pages to be inserted at a `named'
position within the document (see pagename command above).
`when' can be either `after' or `before'. If it is omitted it
defaults to `before'. It should be used at the end of the page
before you want the switch to happen. This allows pages such as
a TOC to be moved to elsewhere in the document, but more
esoteric uses are possible. The convenience macro for this
command is .pdfswitchtopage.
\X'pdf: transition feature mode duration dimension motion direction
scale bool'
where feature can be either SLIDE or BLOCK. When it is SLIDE
the transition is used when a new slide is introduced to the
screen, if BLOCK then this transition is used for the individual
blocks which make up the slide.
mode is the transition type between slides:-
Split - Two lines sweep across the screen, revealing the
new page. The lines may be either horizontal or vertical
and may move inward from the edges of the page or outward
from the center, as specified by the dimension and motion
entries, respectively.
Blinds - Multiple lines, evenly spaced across the screen,
synchronously sweep in the same direction to reveal the
new page. The lines may be either horizontal or
vertical, as specified by the dimension entry.
Horizontal lines move downward; vertical lines move to
the right.
Box - A rectangular box sweeps inward from the edges of
the page or outward from the center, as specified by the
motion entry, revealing the new page.
Wipe - A single line sweeps across the screen from one
edge to the other in the direction specified by the
direction entry, revealing the new page.
Dissolve - The old page dissolves gradually to reveal the
new one.
Glitter - Similar to Dissolve, except that the effect
sweeps across the page in a wide band moving from one
side of the screen to the other in the direction
specified by the direction entry.
R - The new page simply replaces the old one with no
special transition effect; the direction entry shall be
ignored.
Fly - (PDF 1.5) Changes are flown out or in (as specified
by motion), in the direction specified by direction, to
or from a location that is offscreen except when
direction is None.
Push - (PDF 1.5) The old page slides off the screen while
the new page slides in, pushing the old page out in the
direction specified by direction.
Cover - (PDF 1.5) The new page slides on to the screen in
the direction specified by direction, covering the old
page.
Uncover - (PDF 1.5) The old page slides off the screen in
the direction specified by direction, uncovering the new
page in the direction specified by direction.
Fade - (PDF 1.5) The new page gradually becomes visible
through the old one.
duration is the length of the transition in seconds (default 1).
dimension (Optional; Split and Blinds transition styles only)
The dimension in which the specified transition effect shall
occur: H Horizontal, or V Vertical.
motion (Optional; Split, Box and Fly transition styles only) The
direction of motion for the specified transition effect: I
Inward from the edges of the page, or O Outward from the center
of the page.
direction (Optional; Wipe, Glitter, Fly, Cover, Uncover and Push
transition styles only) The direction in which the specified
transition effect shall moves, expressed in degrees
counterclockwise starting from a left-to-right direction. If
the value is a number, it shall be one of: 0 = Left to right, 90
= Bottom to top (Wipe only), 180 = Right to left (Wipe only),
270 = Top to bottom, 315 = Top-left to bottom-right (Glitter
only) The value can be None, which is relevant only for the Fly
transition when the value of scale is not 1.0.
scale (Optional; PDF 1.5; Fly transition style only) The
starting or ending scale at which the changes shall be drawn.
If motion specifies an inward transition, the scale of the
changes drawn shall progress from scale to 1.0 over the course
of the transition. If motion specifies an outward transition,
the scale of the changes drawn shall progress from 1.0 to scale
over the course of the transition
bool (Optional; PDF 1.5; Fly transition style only) If true, the
area that shall be flown in is rectangular and opaque.
This command can be used by calling the macro .pdftransition
using the parameters described above. Any of the parameters may
be replaced with a "." which signifies the parameter retains its
previous value, also any trailing missing parameters are
ignored.
Note: not all PDF Readers support any or all these transitions.
\X'pdf: background cmd left top right bottom weight'
\X'pdf: background off'
\X'pdf: background footnote bottom'
produces a background rectangle on the page, where
cmd is the command, which can be any of "page|fill|box" in
combination. Thus, "pagefill" would draw a rectangle
which covers the whole current page size (in which case
the rest of the parameters can be omitted because the box
dimensions are taken from the current media size).
"boxfill", on the other hand, requires the given
dimensions to place the box. Including "fill" in the
command will paint the rectangle with the current fill
colour (as with \M[]) and including "box" will give the
rectangle a border in the current stroke colour (as with
\m[]).
cmd may also be "off" on its own, which will terminate
drawing the current box. If you have specified a page
colour with "pagefill", it is always the first box in the
stack, and if you specify it again, it will replace the
first entry. Be aware that the "pagefill" box renders
the page opaque, so tools that "watermark" PDF pages are
unlikely to be successful. To return the background to
transparent, issue an "off" command with no other boxes
open.
Finally, cmd may be "footnote" followed by a new value
for bottom, which will be used for all open boxes on the
current page. This is to allow room for footnote areas
that grow while a page is processed (to accommodate
multiple footnotes, for instance). (If the value is
negative, it is used as an offset from the bottom of the
page.)
left
top
right
bottom are the coordinates of the box. The top and bottom
coordinates are the minimum and maximum for the box,
since the actual start of the box is groff's drawing
position when you issue the command, and the bottom of
the box is the point where you turn the box "off". The
top and bottom coordinates are used only if the box
drawing extends onto the next page; ordinarily, they
would be set to the header and footer margins.
weight provides the line width for the border if "box" is
included in the command.
The convenience macro for this escape sequence is
.pdfbackground. An sboxes macro file is also available; see
groff_tmac(5).
Macros
gropdf's support macros in pdf.tmac define the convenience macros
described above. Some features have no direct device control command
counterpart.
.pdfinfo /field content ...
Define PDF metadata. field may be be one of Title, Author,
Subject, Keywords, or another datum supported by the PDF
standard or your reader. field must be prefixed with a slash.
Importing graphics
gropdf supports only the inclusion of other PDF files for inline
images. Such a PDF file may, however, contain any of the graphic
formats supported by the PDF standard, such as JPEG/JFIF, PNG, and GIF.
Any application that outputs PDF can thus be used to prepare files for
embedding in documents processed by groff and gropdf.
The PDF file you wish to insert must be a single page and the drawing
must just fit inside the media size of the PDF file. In inkscape(1) or
gimp(1), for example, make sure the canvas size just fits the image.
The PDF parser gropdf implements has not been rigorously tested with
all applications that produce PDF. If you find a single-page PDF which
fails to import properly, try processing it with the pdftk(1) program.
pdftk existing-file output new-file
You may find that new-file imports successfully.
TrueType and other font formats
gropdf does not yet support any font formats besides Adobe Type 1 (PFA
or PFB).
Font installation
The following is a step-by-step font installation guide for gropdf.
o Convert your font to something groff understands. This is a
PostScript Type 1 font in PFA or PFB format, together with an AFM
file. A PFA file begins as follows.
%!PS-AdobeFont-1.0:
A PFB file contains this string as well, preceded by some non-
printing bytes. In the following steps, we will consider the use of
CTAN's BrushScriptX-Italic <https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/
brushscr> font in PFA format.
o Convert the AFM file to a groff font description file with the
afmtodit(1) program. For instance,
$ afmtodit BrushScriptX-Italic.afm text.map BSI
converts the Adobe Font Metric file BrushScriptX-Italic.afm to the
groff font description file BSI.
If you have a font family which provides regular upright (roman),
bold, italic, and bold-italic styles, (where "italic" may be
"oblique" or "slanted"), we recommend using R, B, I, and BI,
respectively, as suffixes to the groff font family name to enable
groff's font family and style selection features. An example is
groff's built-in support for Times: the font family name is
abbreviated as T, and the groff font names are therefore TR, TB, TI,
and TBI. In our example, however, the BrushScriptX font is available
in a single style only, italic.
o Install the groff font description file(s) in a devpdf subdirectory
in the search path that groff uses for device and font file
descriptions. See the GROFF_FONT_PATH entry in section "Environment"
of troff(1) for the current value of the font search path. While
groff doesn't directly use AFM files, it is a good idea to store them
alongside its font description files.
o Register fonts in the devpdf/download file so they can be located for
embedding in PDF files gropdf generates. Only the first download
file encountered in the font search path is read. If in doubt, copy
the default download file (see section "Files" below) to the first
directory in the font search path and add your fonts there. The
PostScript font name used by gropdf is stored in the internalname
field in the groff font description file. (This name does not
necessarily resemble the font's file name.) If the font in our
example had originated from a foundry named Z, we would add the
following line to download.
Z->BrushScriptX-Italic->BrushScriptX-Italic.pfa
A tab character, depicted as ->, separates the fields. The default
foundry has no name: its field is empty and entries corresponding to
it start with a tab character, as will the one in our example.
o Test the selection and embedding of the new font.
printf "\\f[BSI]Hello, world!\n" | groff -T pdf -P -e >hello.pdf
see hello.pdf
Environment
GROFF_FONT_PATH
A list of directories in which to seek the selected output
device's directory of device and font description files. If, in
the download file, the font file has been specified with a full
path, no directories are searched. See troff(1) and
groff_font(5).
GROPDF_NOSLIDE
If set and evaluates to a true value (to Perl), gropdf ignores
commands specific to presentation PDFs, producing a normal PDF
instead.
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
A timestamp (expressed as seconds since the Unix epoch) to use
as the output creation timestamp in place of the current time.
The time is converted to human-readable form using Perl's
localtime() function and recorded in a PDF comment.
TZ The time zone to use when converting the current time (or value
of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH) to human-readable form; see tzset(3).
Files
/opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/DESC
describes the pdf output device.
/opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/F
describes the font known as F on device pdf.
/opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/U-F
describes the font from the URW foundry (versus the Adobe
default) known as F on device pdf.
/opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/download
lists fonts available for embedding within the PDF document (by
analogy to the ps device's downloadable font support).
/opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/Foundry
is a data file used by the groff build system to locate
PostScript Type 1 fonts.
/opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devpdf/enc/text.enc
describes the encoding scheme used by most PostScript Type 1
fonts; the encoding directive of font description files for the
pdf device refers to it.
/opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/pdf.tmac
defines macros for use with the pdf output device. It is
automatically loaded by troffrc when the pdf output device is
selected.
/opt/local/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/pdfpic.tmac
defines the PDFPIC macro for embedding images in a document; see
groff_tmac(5). It is automatically loaded by troffrc.
Authors
gropdf was written and is maintained by Deri James <deri@chuzzlewit
.myzen.co.uk>.
See also
/opt/local/share/doc/groff-1.23.0/sboxes/msboxes.ms
/opt/local/share/doc/groff-1.23.0/sboxes/msboxes.pdf
"Using PDF boxes with groff and the ms macros", by Deri James.
present.tmac
is part of gpresent <https://bob.diertens.org/corner/useful/
gpresent/>, a software package by Bob Diertens that works with
groff to produce presentations ("foils", or "slide decks").
afmtodit(1), groff(1), troff(1), groff_font(5), groff_out(5)
groff 1.23.0 2 July 2023 gropdf(1)
groff 1.23.0 - Generated Sat Dec 23 09:28:29 CST 2023