TROFF(1plan9)

💖 TROFF — bestie edition 💖

okay so you found the Plan 9 manual, section 1, and the star of the show is troff 🎀 (with its little sibling nroff tagging along). sit down, grab a boba, we're learning typesetting.

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✨ NAME ✨

troff, nroff — text formatting and typesetting 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

troff [ option ...  ] [ file ...  ]

nroff [ option ...  ] [ file ...  ]

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So troff formats text in the named files for printing on a typesetter. nroff does literally the same thing, except its output is suitable for typewriter-like devices. Same energy, different fit 💅

If you don't hand it any file argument at all? It reads standard input. And if you pass an argument that's just a single minus (-), that counts as a file name meaning standard input too. Noted 📝

The options are:

• -olist — print pages in the comma-separated list of numbers and ranges. A range N-M means N through M; an initial -M means up to M; a final N- means from N to the end. ranges slay ✨
• -nN — number the first generated page N.
• -mname — process the macro file /usr/share/9base/troff/tmac/tmac.name before the input files.
• -raN — set register a (a one character name, bestie) to N.
• -i — read standard input after the input files are exhausted.
• -q — invoke the simultaneous input-output mode of the rd request.
• -N — produce output suitable for typewriter-like devices.

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🖨️ Typesetter devices (not -N) only

these ones are ONLY for typesetter devices, meaning not when you used -N. read the room 🫶

• -a — send a printable textual approximation of the results to the standard output.
• -Tdest — prepare output for typesetter dest:
  • -Tutf — (the default.) PostScript printers with preprocessing to handle Unicode characters encoded in UTF 🌈
  • -Tpost — regular PostScript printers
  • -T202 — Mergenthaler Linotron 202
• -Fdir — take font information from directory dir.

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⌨️ Typewriter (-N) output only

and these ones are the opposite — only for typewriter (-N) output. the duality 😭

• -sN — halt prior to every N pages (default N=1) to allow paper loading or changing. very much giving "brb gotta feed the printer" 🧚
• -Tname — prepare output for specified terminal. Known names include utf for the normal Plan 9 UTF encoding of the Unicode Standard character set (default), 37 for the Teletype model 37, lp (line-printer) for any terminal without half-line capability, 450 for the DASI-450 (Diablo Hyterm), and think (HP ThinkJet). a whole roster 👑
• -e — produce equally-spaced words in adjusted lines, using full terminal resolution.
• -h — use output tabs during horizontal spacing to speed output and reduce output character count. Tab settings are assumed to be every 8 nominal character widths.

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🌸 FILES 🌸

• /tmp/trtmp* — temporary file
• /tmac/tmac.* — standard macro files
• /troff/term/* — terminal driving tables for nroff
• /troff/font/* — font width tables for troff

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🎀 SOURCE 🎀

/src/cmd/troff

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• lpr(1), proof(1), tr2post(1), eqn(1), tbl(1), pic(1), grap(1), doctype(1), ms(7), image(7), tex(1), deroff(1)
• J. F. Ossanna and B. W. Kernighan, ``Troff User's Manual''
• B. W. Kernighan, ``A TROFF Tutorial'', Unix Research System Programmer's Manual, Tenth Edition, Volume 2.

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💜 and that's the whole page, bestie. no cap, we got every single flag.

okay so final vibe check: this whole thing lives in the TROFF(1plan9) corner of the Plan 9 manual, section 1, and yeah the page header and footer both just say TROFF(1plan9) at you, twice, like a lil echo 💖 go forth and format, you absolute icon ⭐🍓