NEWS revision 44777
1This file describes recent user-visible changes in groff. Bug fixes 2are not described. There are more details in the man pages. 3 4VERSION 1.11 5============ 6 7James Clark has written (11 Aug 1997): 8>Frankly I don't known when I'm going to be able to do another groff 9>release. At the moment, I have no time, no Unix machine, and not a lot 10>of interest in doing it. If anybody else wants to take over groff 11>maintenance, that would be fine with me. Last time I asked in 12>gnu.groff.bug, nobody volunteered. 13 14This means groff is an orphan. It is looking for a maintainer. 15 16Complete documentation for pic is now in the file doc/pic.ms. It was 17contributed by Eric S. Raymond, <esr@thyrsus.com>, who is emphatically 18*not* volunteering to take over groff as he is way overworked with 19half a dozen other projects. 20 21VERSION 1.10 22============ 23 24The directory where data files are installed has been changed from 25/usr/local/lib/groff to /usr/local/share/groff to comply with the 26latest GNU coding standards. 27 28By default groff programs with Unix equivalents are installed with a 29"g" prefix unless there is an existing (non-groff) troff installation. 30 31A new approach is used to make system macro packages available to 32groff. Instead of simply including /usr/lib/tmac in the list of 33directories searched by groff, the installation process creates for 34each system macro package a wrapper macro package in the groff macro 35directory that references the system macro package. The groff macro 36packages are now installed with a leading "g" prefix if there is a 37system version of the same macro package, and otherwise without the 38"g" prefix, with the exception that the groff version of -me which is 39always installed as -me. 40 41There is a new device, lj4, for the HP LaserJet 4 (and PCL5 42compatibles). 43 44Groff 45----- 46 47groff has a -S option that prevents the use of unsafe features in pic 48and troff. This uses a new -S option of pic and the -msafer macros 49for troff. 50 51Troff 52----- 53 54The `blm' request specifies a macro to be invoked when a blank line is 55encountered. 56 57Pic 58--- 59 60A -S (safer) option disables the sh command. 61 62Grops 63----- 64 65The -m option enables manual feed. 66 67VERSION 1.09 68============ 69 70\(rn will now produce a character that has the traditional metrics, 71and will form corners with \(ul and \(br. This means that it will not 72align properly with \(sr. Instead there's a new character 73\[radicalex] which aligns with \(sr; this is used by eqn for doing 74square roots. 75 76Troff 77----- 78 79The `pso' request allows you to read from the standard output of a 80command. 81 82Grops 83----- 84 85The PSPIC macro has options to allow the horizontal alignment of the 86graphic to be specified. 87 88VERSION 1.08 89============ 90 91Troff 92----- 93 94The escape sequence \V[xxx] will interpolate the value of the 95environment variable xxx. 96 97Tbl 98--- 99 100The decimalpoint option can be used to specify the character to be 101recognized as the decimal point character in place of the default 102period. 103 104VERSION 1.07 105============ 106 107Groff 108----- 109 110The environment variable GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX can be used to control 111whether groff looks for `gtroff' or `troff' (similarily for the 112preprocessors.) 113 114Troff 115----- 116 117Multilingual hyphenation is supported by new `hpf' and `hla' requests, 118and by a `\n[.hla]' number register. The -H option has been removed. 119Files of hyphenation patterns can have comments. 120 121When a font cannot be found, troff gives a warning (of type `font', 122enabled by default) instead of an error. 123 124There's a new request `trnt' that's like `tr' except that it doesn't 125apply to text transparently throughput into a diversion with \!. 126 127Tbl 128--- 129 130There is a `nokeep' option which tells tbl not to use diversions to 131try to keep the table on one page. 132 133Eqn 134--- 135 136Setting the parameter `nroff' to a non-zero value causes `ndefine' to 137behave like `define' and `tdefine' to be ignored. This is done by 138eqnrc when the current device is ascii or latin1. There's a `neqn' 139script that just does `eqn -Tascii'. 140 141Grotty 142------ 143 144grotty uses whatever page length was specified using the `pl' request 145rather than using the paperlength command in the DESC file. The 146paperwidth command in the DESC file is also ignored. 147 148VERSION 1.06 149============ 150 151The programs in groff that have Unix counterparts can now be installed 152without a leading `g' prefix. See the `g' variable in the Makefile. 153 154The g?nroff script simulates the nroff command using groff. 155 156New special characters \(+h, \(+f, \(+p, \(Fn, \(Bq, \(bq, \(aq, \(lz, 157\(an. See groff_char(7). 158 159^L is now a legal input character. 160 161Groff 162----- 163 164The Xps pseudo-device has disappeared. Instead there is a new -X 165option that tells groff to use gxditview instead of the usual 166postprocessor. (So instead of -TXps, use -XTps or just -X if your 167default device is ps.) 168 169The postprocessor to be used for a particular device is now specified 170by a `postpro' command in the DESC file rather than being compiled 171into groff. Similarly the command to be used for printing (with the 172-l option) is now specified by a `print' command in the DESC file. 173 174The groff command no longer specifies eqnchar as an input file for 175eqn. Instead eqn automatically loads a file `eqnrc'. The groff 176command no longer passes the -D option to eqn. Instead eqnrc sets the 177draw_lines parameter. 178 179The groff command no longer tells troff to load a device-specific 180macro file. This is handled instead by the `troffrc' file, which is 181always loaded by troff. 182 183The shell script version of groff has been removed. 184 185Troff 186----- 187 188The `rchar' request removes a character definition established with `char'. 189 190Compatibility mode is disabled and the escape character is set to `\' 191while a character definition is being processed. 192 193The `\#' escape sequence is like `\"' except that the terminating 194newline is ignored. 195 196The `shc' request tells troff which character to insert (instead of 197the default \(hy) when a word is hyphenated at a line break. 198 199A font name of 0 (zero) in the DESC file will cause no font to be 200mounted on the corresponding font position. This is useful for 201arranging that special fonts are mounted on positions on which users 202are not likely explicitly to mount fonts. All groff devices now avoid 203initially mounting fonts on positions 5-9. 204 205The `do' request allows a single request or macro to be interpreted 206with compatibility mode disabled. 207 208troff automatically loads a file `troffrc' before any other input file. 209This can be prevented with the -R option. This file is responsible 210for loading the device-specific macros. 211 212Pic 213--- 214 215The -x option has been removed and a -n option has been added. By 216default, pic now assumes that the postprocessor supports groff 217extensions. The -n option tells pic to generate output that works 218with ditroff drivers. The -z option now applies only to TeX mode. 219 220The -p option has been removed. Instead if the -n option is not 221specified, pic generates output that uses \X'ps: ...' if the \n(0p 222register is non-zero and tmac.ps sets this register to 1. 223 224In places where you could 1st or 5th you can now say `i'th or `i+1'th 225(the quotes are required). 226 227Eqn 228--- 229 230Eqn now automatically reads a file `eqnrc' from the macro directory. 231This performs the same role that the eqnchar files used to. This can 232be prevented by the -R option. 233 234Setting the draw_lines parameter to a non-zero value causes lines to 235be drawn using \D rather than \l. The -D option is now obsolete. 236 237`uparrow', `downarrow' and `updownarrow' can be used with `left' and 238`right'. 239 240The amount of extra space added before and after lines containing 241equations can be controlled using the `body_height' and `body_depth' 242parameters. 243 244Grops 245----- 246 247Font description files have been regenerated from newer AFM files. 248You can get access to the additional characters present in the text 249fonts in newer PostScript printers by using -mpsnew. 250 251The default value of the -b option is specified by a `broken' command 252in the DESC file. 253 254With the -g option, grops will generate PostScript code that guesses 255the page height. This allows documents to be printed on both letter 256(8.5x11) and A4 paper without change. 257 258Grodvi 259------ 260 261ISO Latin-1 characters are available with -Tdvi. Format groff_char(7) 262with groff -Tdvi for more information. 263 264Grotty 265------ 266 267The -mtty-char macros contain additional character definitions for 268use with grotty. 269 270Macros 271------ 272 273In previous releases the groff -me macros treated the $r and $R number 274registers in a way that was incompatible with the BSD -me macros. The 275reason for this was that the approach used by the BSD -me macros does 276not work with low resolution devices such as -TX75 and -TX100. 277However, this caused problems with existing -me documents. In this 278release, the vertical spacing is controlled by the $v and $V registers 279which have the same meaning as $r and $R in earlier groff releases. 280In addition, if the $r or $R register is set to a value that would be 281correct for for the BSD -me macros and a low resolution device is not 282being used, then an appropriate value for the $v or $V register will 283be derived from the $r or $R register. 284 285The groff -me macros work with -C and (I think) with Unix troff. 286 287For backward compatibility with BSD -me, the \*{ and \*} strings are 288also available as \*[ and \*]. Of course, \*[ will only be usable 289with -C. 290 291The \*T string has been deleted. Use \*(Tm instead. 292 293Xditview 294-------- 295 296The `n', Space and Return keys are bound to the Next Page action. The 297`p', BackSpace and Delete keys are bound to the Previous Page action. 298The `q' key is bound to the Quit action. 299 300The `r' key is bound to a rerasterize action that reruns groff, and 301redisplays the current page. 302 303VERSION 1.05 304============ 305 306Pic 307--- 308 309There is a alternative assignment operator `:=' which interacts 310differently with blocks. 311 312There is a new command `command', which allows the values of variables 313to be passed through to troff or TeX. 314 315The `print' command now accepts multiple arguments. 316 317String comparison expressions (using `==' or `!=') are allowed in more 318contexts. 319 320Grotty 321------ 322 323Horizontal and vertical lines drawn with \D'l ...' will be rendered 324using -, | and + characters. This is intended to give reasonable 325results with boxed tables. It won't work well with pic. 326 327Macros 328------ 329 330The -mdoc macros have been upgraded to the version in the second 331Berkeley networking release. This version is not completely 332compatible with earlier versions; the old version is still available 333as -mdoc.old. The grog script has been enhanced so that it can 334usually determine whether a document requires the old or new versions. 335 336With -TX75, -TX100 and -TXps, the PSPIC macro will produce a box 337around where the picture would appear with -Tps. 338 339VERSION 1.04 340============ 341 342An implementation of the -mm macros is included. 343 344The directory in which temporary files are created can be controlled 345by setting the GROFF_TMPDIR or TMPDIR environment variables. 346 347Pic 348--- 349 350Some MS-DOS support (see pic/make-dos-dist). 351 352Grops 353----- 354 355There are two new \X commands (\X'ps: invis' and \X'ps: endinvis') 356which make it possible to have substitute characters that are 357displayed when previewing with -TXps but ignored when printing with 358grops. 359 360Xditview 361-------- 362 363Support for scalable fonts. 364 365VERSION 1.03 366============ 367 368No changes other than bug fixes. 369 370VERSION 1.02 371============ 372 373There is an implementation of refer and associated programs. groff -R 374preprocesses with grefer; no mechanism is provided for passing 375arguments to grefer because most grefer options have equivalent 376commands which can be included in the file. grog also supports refer. 377 378There is an alternative perl implementation of the grog script. 379 380The code field in lines in the charset section of font description 381files is now allowed to contain an arbitrary integer (previously it 382was required to lie between 0 and 255). Currently grops and grodvi 383use only the low order 8 bits of the value. Grodvi will use the 384complete value; however, this is unlikely to be useful with 385traditional TeX tools (.tfm files only allow 8 bit character codes.) 386 387Left and right double quotes can be obtained with \(lq and \(rq 388respectively. 389 390There is a new program called pfbtops which translates PostScript 391fonts in pfb format to ASCII. 392 393A slightly modified version of the Berkeley tmac.doc is included. 394 395Troff 396----- 397 398In long escape names the closing ] is now required to be at the same 399input level as the opening [. 400 401The \A'S' escape sequence returns 1 or 0 according as S is or is not 402suitable for use as a name. 403 404\~ produces an unbreakable space that can be stretched when the line 405is adjusted. 406 407The `mso' request is like the `so' request except that it searches for 408the file in the same directories in which tmac.X is searched for when 409the -mX option is given. 410 411The escape sequence `\R' is similar to the `nr' request. 412 413Eqn 414--- 415 416A new `special' primitive allows you to add new types of unary 417constructs by writing a troff macro. 418 419Pic 420--- 421 422The implementation no longer uses gperf. 423 424Grops 425----- 426 427The compile-time -DBROKEN_SPOOLER option has been replaced by a 428BROKEN_SPOOLER_FLAGS option. This allows more precise control over 429how grops should workaround broken spoolers and previewers. There is 430a new -b option that can change this at run-time. 431 432Grops now generates PostScript that complies with version 3.0 of the 433Document Structuring Convention. 434 435The resource management component of grops (the part that deals with 436imported documents and downloadable fonts) has been rewritten and now 437supports version 3.0 of the Document Structuring Conventions. The 438%%DocumentFonts comment is no longer supported; you must use the 439%%Document{Needed,Supplied}{Fonts,Resources} comments instead 440(or as well.) 441 442tmac.psatk contains some macros that support the mechanism used by the 443Andrew Toolkit for including PostScript graphics in troff documents. 444 445Xditview 446-------- 447 448Parts of xditview have been rewritten so that it can be used with the 449output of gtroff -Tps. groff -TXps will run gtroff -Tps with 450gxditview. 451 452There is a new menu entry `Print' which brings up a dialog box for 453specifying a command with which the file being previewed should be 454printed. 455 456Xditview now uses imake. 457 458VERSION 1.01 459============ 460 461The groff command now understands the gtroff `-a' and `-i' options. 462 463With the `m' and `n' scale indicators, the scale factor is rounded 464horizontally before being applied. This makes (almost) no difference 465for devices with `hor' equal to 1, but it makes groff with -Tascii or 466-Tlatin1 behave more like nroff in its treatment of these scale 467indicators. Accordingly tmac.tty now calls the `nroff' request so 468that the `n' condition will be true. 469 470The device-specific macros (tmac.ps, tmac.dvi, tmac.tty and tmac.X) 471have been made to work at least somewhat with -C. In particular the 472special characters defined by these macros now work with -C. 473 474groff -Tdvi -p will now pass pic the -x flag; this will enable filling 475of arrowheads and boxes, provided that your dvi driver supports the 476latest version of the tpic specials. 477 478Eqn 479--- 480 481There is a new `-N' option that tells eqn not to allow newlines in 482delimiters. This allows eqn to recover better from missing closing 483delimiters. The groff command will pass on a `-N' option to eqn. 484 485Grops 486----- 487 488You can now use psfig with grops. See the file ps/psfig.diff. I do 489not recommend using psfig for new documents. 490 491The command \X'ps: file F' is similar to \X'ps: exec ...' except that 492the PostScript code is read from the file F instead of being contained 493within the \X command. This was added to support psfig. 494 495Grodvi 496------ 497 498There are font files HB and HI corresponding to cmsssbx10 and cmssi10. 499 500Macros 501------ 502 503The groff -me macros now work with the -C option. As a result, they 504may also work with Unix nroff/troff. 505 506In -me, the $r and $R number registers now contain the line spacing as 507a percentage of the pointsize expressed in units (normally about 120). 508The previous definition was useless with low resolution devices such 509as X75 and X100. 510 511VERSION 1.00 512============ 513 514A -ms-like macro-package is now included. 515 516The name for the Icelandic lowercase eth character has been changed 517from \(-d to \(Sd. 518 519Troff 520----- 521 522There is a new request `nroff', which makes the `n' built-in condition 523true and the `t' built-in condition false; also a new request `troff' 524which undoes the effect of the `nroff' request. This is intended only 525for backward compatibility: it is usually better to test \n(.H or 526\n(.V or to use the `c' built-in condition. 527 528The \R escape sequence has been deleted. Use \E instead. 529 530There are `break' and `continue' requests for use with the `while' 531request. 532 533There is a request `hym' that can ensure that when the current 534adjustment mode is not `b' a line will not be hyphenated if it is no 535more than a given amount short, and a request `hys' that can ensure 536that when the current adjustment mode is `b' a line will not be 537hyphenated if it can be justified by adding no more than a given 538amount of extra space to each word space. 539 540There is a request `rj' similar to `ce' that right justifies lines. 541 542A warning of type `space' will be given when a call is made to an 543undefined request or macro with a name longer than two characters, and 544the first two characters of the name make a name that is defined. 545This is intended to find places where a space has been omitted been a 546request or macro and its argument. This type of warning is enabled by 547default. 548 549Pic 550--- 551 552A comma is permitted between the arguments to the `reset' command. 553 554For use with TeX, there is a new `-c' option that makes gpic treat 555lines beginning with `.' in a way that is more compatible with tpic 556(but ugly). 557 558Eqn 559--- 560 561It is no longer necessary to add `space 0' at the beginning of 562complicated equations inside pictures. 563 564`prime' is now treated as an ordinary character, as in Unix eqn. The 565previous behaviour of `prime' as an operator can now be obtained using 566`opprime'. 567 568Xditview 569-------- 570 571There are two new devices X75-12 and X100-12 which are the same as X75 572and X100 except that they are optimized for documents that use mostly 57312 point text. 574 575VERSION 0.6 576=========== 577 578The installation process has been refined to make it easy for you to 579share groff with someone who has the same type of machine as you but 580does not have a C++ compiler. See the end of the INSTALL file for 581details. 582 583There is a man page for the tfmtodit program which explains how to use 584your own fonts with groff -Tdvi. 585 586There is a man page for afmtodit which explains how to use your own 587PostScript fonts with groff -Tps. 588 589The \N escape sequence is now fully supported. It can now be used to 590access any character in a font by its output code, even if it doesn't 591have a groff name. This is made possible by a convention in the font 592files that a character name of `---' refers to an unnamed character. 593The drivers now all support the `N' command required for this. The font 594description files have been updated to include unnamed characters. 595 596The `x' command in font description files has been removed: instead 597any unknown commands are automatically made available to the drivers. 598If you constructed your own font files with an earlier version of 599tfmtodit or afmtodit, you must construct them again using the current 600version. 601 602Characters between 0200 and 0237 octal are no longer legal input 603characters. Note that these are not used in ISO 8859. 604 605A command called `grog' has been added, similar to the `doctype' 606command described in Kernighan and Pike. 607 608Groff 609----- 610 611The groff command has some new options: -V prints the pipeline 612instead of executing it; -P passes an argument to the postprocessor, 613-L passes an argument to the spooler. 614 615There is a C++ implementation of the groff command. This handles some 616things slightly better than the shell script. In particular, it can 617correctly handle arguments containing characters that have a special 618meaning to the shell; it can give an error message when child 619processes other than the last in the pipeline terminate abnormally; 620its exit status can take account of the exit statuses of all its child 621processes; it is a little more efficient; when geqn is used, it 622searches for the eqnchar file in the same way that font metric files 623are searched for, rather than expecting to find it in one particular 624directory. 625 626Gtroff 627------ 628 629There is font translation feature: For example, you can tell gtroff to 630use font `HR' whenever font `H' is requested with the line 631 .ftr H HR 632This would be useful for a document that uses `H' to refer to 633Helvetica. 634 635There are some new number registers: `.kern' contains the current kern 636mode, `.lg' the current ligature mode, `.x' the major version number, 637`.y' the minor version number, `.ce' the number of lines to be 638centered in the current environment, `.trunc' the amount of vertical 639space truncated by the most recently sprung vertical position trap, 640`.ne' the amount of vertical space needed in the last `ne' request 641that caused a vertical position trap to be sprung. 642 643The `cf' request now behaves sensibly in a diversion. If used in a 644diversion, it will now arrange for the file to be copied to the output 645when the diversion is reread. 646 647There is a new request `trf' (transparent file) similar to `cf', but 648more like `\!'. 649 650There is a new escape sequence `\Y[xxx]', roughly equivalent to 651`\X'\*[xxx]'', except that the contents of string or macro xxx are not 652interpreted, and xxx may contain newlines. This requires an output 653format extension; the drivers have been modified to understand this. 654Grops has also been modified to cope with newlines in the arguments to 655\X commands; grops has a new \X command mdef, which is like def except 656that it has a first argument giving the number of definitions. 657 658There is a new warning category `escape' which warns about unknown 659escape sequences. 660 661The `fp' request now takes an optional third argument giving the external 662name of the font. 663 664The `\_' character is now automatically translated to `\(ul' as in troff. 665 666The environment variable `GROFF_HYPHEN' gives the name of the file 667containing the hyphenation patterns. 668 669There is a `\C'xxx'' escape sequence equivalent to `\[xxx]'. 670 671Characters ", ', ), ], *, \(dg are now initially transparent for the purposes 672of end of sentence recognition. 673 674There is an anti-recursion feature in the `char' request, so you can 675say `.char \(bu \s+2\(bu\s-2'. 676 677The limit on the number of font positions has been removed. 678Accordingly `\n[.fp]' never returns 0. 679 680The restriction on the number of numbered environments has been removed. 681 682There is a new escape sequence `\E' that makes it possible to 683guarantee that an escape sequence won't get interpreted in copy-mode. 684The `\R' escape sequence is accordingly now deprecated. 685 686Gpic 687---- 688 689Arguments of the form `X anything X' (in the `copy thru', `sh', `for', 690`if' and `define' constructs) can now be of the form `{ anything }'. 691 692If the `linethick' variable is negative (as it now is initially), 693lines will be drawn with a thickness proportional to the current point 694size. 695 696The `rand' function now takes no arguments and returns a number between 6970 and 1. The old syntax is still supported. 698 699`^' can be used in expressions to indicate exponentiation. 700 701In the `for' construct the argument to the by clause can be prefixed 702by `*' to indicate that the increment is multiplicative. 703 704A bare expression may be used as an attribute. If the current 705direction is `dir', then an attribute `expr' is equivalent to 706`dir expr' 707 708There is a `sprintf' construct that allows numbers to be formatted and used 709wherever a quoted string can be used. 710 711The height of a text object without an explicit height attribute is 712the number of text strings associated with the object times the value 713of the `textht' variable. 714 715The maximum height and width of a picture is controlled by the 716`maxpswid' and `maxpsht' variables. 717 718Gtbl 719---- 720 721Gtbl can now handle gracefully the situation where the `ce' request 722has been applied to a table. 723 724Geqn 725---- 726 727The `ifdef' primitive has been generalized. 728 729A tilde accent can be put underneath a box using `utilde'. This 730defined using a general `uaccent' primitive. 731 732Grops 733----- 734 735There is a new PostScript font downloading scheme which handles font 736downloading for imported illustrations. Previously, the name of the 737file containing the font was given in the `x download' line in the 738groff font metric file. Now, there is a `download' file which says 739for each PostScript font name which file contains that font. Grops 740can also now handle inter-font dependencies, where one downloadable 741font depends on some other (possibly downloadable) font. 742 743The `T' font has been removed. The characters it used to provide are 744now provided by `char' definitions in tmac.ps. TSymbol.ps has also 745been removed, and the tweaks it provided are now provided by `char' 746definitions. 747