❧ Introduction to Groff

Groff is the GNU implementation of AT&T’s troff and associated programs (pic, table, etc.). It’s a typesetting language much like LaTeX.

But who cares! Here’s the canonical helloworld.ms:

.TL
Hello World
.AU
Devrin Talen
.AI
Awesome, Inc.
.AB no
.AE
.PP
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim
veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea
commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate
velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat
cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id
est laborum.

Compile this into something useful with

% groff -ms -P-pletter helloworld.ms | ps2pdf - helloworld.pdf

Groff’s info page is chock full of good documentation and should be your first resource for learning how to use it. But here are the rough strokes:

• Lines that begin with . characters specify macros. For example, the .TL macro sets up everything that follows as title text. The .AU macro changes that to a different font for listing author names.

• Unlike LaTeX, which uses begin and end statements to enclose sections, groff uses macros to switch up the formatting until the next macro is specified.

• Everything has to be processed in one pass of the source document. This means that tables, figures, etc. will all be positioned where you specify them in the source, unlike LaTeX which will do its best to find a good spot. (Also – groff won’t generate a bunch of temporary files and clutter stuff up)

It’s a venerable and time-tested typesetting language should be a part of anyone’s typesetting arsenal.