README The `groffer' program is the easiest way to read documents written in some `roff' language, such as the `man pages', the manual pages in many operating systems. All `roff' preprocessors, such as `chem', are detected and executed automatically. Source files in this directory ChangeLog information on all changements for groffer versions 1.* Makefile.sub make file used by groff README this file, general description of the program version.sh information on version number and last update perl_test.pl test whether perl has a suitable version perl/ subdirectory for the Perl version, see perl/README_PERL shell/ subdirectory for the shell version, see shell/README_SH Input Input comes from either standard input or command line parameters that represent names of exisiting roff files or standardized specifications for searching man pages. All of these can be compressed in a format that is decompressible by `gzip' or `bzip2', including `.gz', `bz2', and `.Z'. `groffer' has many built-in `man' functionalities to find and read the manual pages on UNIX and similar operating systems. It accepts the information from an installed `man' program, but tries to find a man path by itself. `groffer' bundles all filespec parameters into a single output file in the same way as `groff'. The disadvantage of this is that all file name arguments must use the same groff language. To change this, the option parsing must be revised for large parts. It seems that this would create incompatibilities, so the actual option strategy is kept. Output All input is first sent to `grog' to determine the necessary `groff' command and then to `groff' together with all necessary preprocessors. So no special `groff' arguments must be given. But all `groff' options can be specified when this seems to be appropriate. The following displaying modes for the output are available: - Display formatted input with -- a PDF viewer, -- a Postcript viewer, -- a web browser, -- the X `roff' viewer `gxditview', -- a DVI viewer, -- a pager in a text terminal (tty). - Generate `groff' output on stdout without a viewer. - Generate the `groff intermediate output' on standard output without postprocessing. - Output the source code without any `groff' processing. - There are some information outputs without `groff' processing, such as by option `-V' and the `man' like `whatis' and `apropos' outputs. By default, the program tries to display a graphical device in X; on non-X text terminals, the `tty' text mode with a pager is tried by default. File access The shell and the Perl version of groffer now use umask of 077. This is a very strict security issue. It allows only access of the temporary files by the file owner. Compatibility `groffer' is compatible with the `man' program. It supports .so requests based on the man path and compressed files. That's more than `groff' does. Mailing lists For reporting bugs of `groffer', groff's free mailing list can be used. For a general discussion, the mailing list is more useful, but one has to subscribe to this list at http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff. See the `README' file in the top directory of the `groff' source package for more details on these mailing lists. ####### License Last update: 5 Jan 2009 Copyright (C) 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Written by Bernd Warken . This file is part of `groffer', which is part of `groff'. `groff' is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. `groff' is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . ####### Emacs settings Local Variables: mode: text End: