NEWS revision 18099
1This file describes recent user-visible changes in groff. Bug fixes 2are not described. There are more details in the man pages. 3 4VERSION 1.10 5============ 6 7The directory where data files are installed has been changed from 8/usr/local/lib/groff to /usr/local/share/groff to comply with the 9latest GNU coding standards. 10 11By default groff programs with Unix equivalents are installed with a 12"g" prefix unless there is an existing (non-groff) troff installation. 13 14A new approach is used to make system macro packages available to 15groff. Instead of simply including /usr/lib/tmac in the list of 16directories searched by groff, the installation process creates for 17each system macro package a wrapper macro package in the groff macro 18directory that references the system macro package. The groff macro 19packages are now installed with a leading "g" prefix if there is a 20system version of the same macro package, and otherwise without the 21"g" prefix, with the exception that the groff version of -me which is 22always installed as -me. 23 24There is a new device, lj4, for the HP LaserJet 4 (and PCL5 25compatibles). 26 27Groff 28----- 29 30groff has a -S option that prevents the use of unsafe features in pic 31and troff. This uses a new -S option of pic and the -msafer macros 32for troff. 33 34Troff 35----- 36 37The `blm' request specifies a macro to be invoked when a blank line is 38encountered. 39 40Pic 41--- 42 43A -S (safer) option disables the sh command. 44 45Grops 46----- 47 48The -m option enables manual feed. 49 50VERSION 1.09 51============ 52 53\(rn will now produce a character that has the traditional metrics, 54and will form corners with \(ul and \(br. This means that it will not 55align properly with \(sr. Instead there's a new character 56\[radicalex] which aligns with \(sr; this is used by eqn for doing 57square roots. 58 59Troff 60----- 61 62The `pso' request allows you to read from the standard output of a 63command. 64 65Grops 66----- 67 68The PSPIC macro has options to allow the horizontal alignment of the 69graphic to be specified. 70 71VERSION 1.08 72============ 73 74Troff 75----- 76 77The escape sequence \V[xxx] will interpolate the value of the 78environment variable xxx. 79 80Tbl 81--- 82 83The decimalpoint option can be used to specify the character to be 84recognized as the decimal point character in place of the default 85period. 86 87VERSION 1.07 88============ 89 90Groff 91----- 92 93The environment variable GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX can be used to control 94whether groff looks for `gtroff' or `troff' (similarily for the 95preprocessors.) 96 97Troff 98----- 99 100Multilingual hyphenation is supported by new `hpf' and `hla' requests, 101and by a `\n[.hla]' number register. The -H option has been removed. 102Files of hyphenation patterns can have comments. 103 104When a font cannot be found, troff gives a warning (of type `font', 105enabled by default) instead of an error. 106 107There's a new request `trnt' that's like `tr' except that it doesn't 108apply to text transparently throughput into a diversion with \!. 109 110Tbl 111--- 112 113There is a `nokeep' option which tells tbl not to use diversions to 114try to keep the table on one page. 115 116Eqn 117--- 118 119Setting the parameter `nroff' to a non-zero value causes `ndefine' to 120behave like `define' and `tdefine' to be ignored. This is done by 121eqnrc when the current device is ascii or latin1. There's a `neqn' 122script that just does `eqn -Tascii'. 123 124Grotty 125------ 126 127grotty uses whatever page length was specified using the `pl' request 128rather than using the paperlength command in the DESC file. The 129paperwidth command in the DESC file is also ignored. 130 131VERSION 1.06 132============ 133 134The programs in groff that have Unix counterparts can now be installed 135without a leading `g' prefix. See the `g' variable in the Makefile. 136 137The g?nroff script simulates the nroff command using groff. 138 139New special characters \(+h, \(+f, \(+p, \(Fn, \(Bq, \(bq, \(aq, \(lz, 140\(an. See groff_char(7). 141 142^L is now a legal input character. 143 144Groff 145----- 146 147The Xps pseudo-device has disappeared. Instead there is a new -X 148option that tells groff to use gxditview instead of the usual 149postprocessor. (So instead of -TXps, use -XTps or just -X if your 150default device is ps.) 151 152The postprocessor to be used for a particular device is now specified 153by a `postpro' command in the DESC file rather than being compiled 154into groff. Similarly the command to be used for printing (with the 155-l option) is now specified by a `print' command in the DESC file. 156 157The groff command no longer specifies eqnchar as an input file for 158eqn. Instead eqn automatically loads a file `eqnrc'. The groff 159command no longer passes the -D option to eqn. Instead eqnrc sets the 160draw_lines parameter. 161 162The groff command no longer tells troff to load a device-specific 163macro file. This is handled instead by the `troffrc' file, which is 164always loaded by troff. 165 166The shell script version of groff has been removed. 167 168Troff 169----- 170 171The `rchar' request removes a character definition established with `char'. 172 173Compatibility mode is disabled and the escape character is set to `\' 174while a character definition is being processed. 175 176The `\#' escape sequence is like `\"' except that the terminating 177newline is ignored. 178 179The `shc' request tells troff which character to insert (instead of 180the default \(hy) when a word is hyphenated at a line break. 181 182A font name of 0 (zero) in the DESC file will cause no font to be 183mounted on the corresponding font position. This is useful for 184arranging that special fonts are mounted on positions on which users 185are not likely explicitly to mount fonts. All groff devices now avoid 186initially mounting fonts on positions 5-9. 187 188The `do' request allows a single request or macro to be interpreted 189with compatibility mode disabled. 190 191troff automatically loads a file `troffrc' before any other input file. 192This can be prevented with the -R option. This file is responsible 193for loading the device-specific macros. 194 195Pic 196--- 197 198The -x option has been removed and a -n option has been added. By 199default, pic now assumes that the postprocessor supports groff 200extensions. The -n option tells pic to generate output that works 201with ditroff drivers. The -z option now applies only to TeX mode. 202 203The -p option has been removed. Instead if the -n option is not 204specified, pic generates output that uses \X'ps: ...' if the \n(0p 205register is non-zero and tmac.ps sets this register to 1. 206 207In places where you could 1st or 5th you can now say `i'th or `i+1'th 208(the quotes are required). 209 210Eqn 211--- 212 213Eqn now automatically reads a file `eqnrc' from the macro directory. 214This performs the same role that the eqnchar files used to. This can 215be prevented by the -R option. 216 217Setting the draw_lines parameter to a non-zero value causes lines to 218be drawn using \D rather than \l. The -D option is now obsolete. 219 220`uparrow', `downarrow' and `updownarrow' can be used with `left' and 221`right'. 222 223The amount of extra space added before and after lines containing 224equations can be controlled using the `body_height' and `body_depth' 225parameters. 226 227Grops 228----- 229 230Font description files have been regenerated from newer AFM files. 231You can get access to the additional characters present in the text 232fonts in newer PostScript printers by using -mpsnew. 233 234The default value of the -b option is specified by a `broken' command 235in the DESC file. 236 237With the -g option, grops will generate PostScript code that guesses 238the page height. This allows documents to be printed on both letter 239(8.5x11) and A4 paper without change. 240 241Grodvi 242------ 243 244ISO Latin-1 characters are available with -Tdvi. Format groff_char(7) 245with groff -Tdvi for more information. 246 247Grotty 248------ 249 250The -mtty-char macros contain additional character definitions for 251use with grotty. 252 253Macros 254------ 255 256In previous releases the groff -me macros treated the $r and $R number 257registers in a way that was incompatible with the BSD -me macros. The 258reason for this was that the approach used by the BSD -me macros does 259not work with low resolution devices such as -TX75 and -TX100. 260However, this caused problems with existing -me documents. In this 261release, the vertical spacing is controlled by the $v and $V registers 262which have the same meaning as $r and $R in earlier groff releases. 263In addition, if the $r or $R register is set to a value that would be 264correct for for the BSD -me macros and a low resolution device is not 265being used, then an appropriate value for the $v or $V register will 266be derived from the $r or $R register. 267 268The groff -me macros work with -C and (I think) with Unix troff. 269 270For backward compatibility with BSD -me, the \*{ and \*} strings are 271also available as \*[ and \*]. Of course, \*[ will only be usable 272with -C. 273 274The \*T string has been deleted. Use \*(Tm instead. 275 276Xditview 277-------- 278 279The `n', Space and Return keys are bound to the Next Page action. The 280`p', BackSpace and Delete keys are bound to the Previous Page action. 281The `q' key is bound to the Quit action. 282 283The `r' key is bound to a rerasterize action that reruns groff, and 284redisplays the current page. 285 286VERSION 1.05 287============ 288 289Pic 290--- 291 292There is a alternative assignment operator `:=' which interacts 293differently with blocks. 294 295There is a new command `command', which allows the values of variables 296to be passed through to troff or TeX. 297 298The `print' command now accepts multiple arguments. 299 300String comparison expressions (using `==' or `!=') are allowed in more 301contexts. 302 303Grotty 304------ 305 306Horizontal and vertical lines drawn with \D'l ...' will be rendered 307using -, | and + characters. This is intended to give reasonable 308results with boxed tables. It won't work well with pic. 309 310Macros 311------ 312 313The -mdoc macros have been upgraded to the version in the second 314Berkeley networking release. This version is not completely 315compatible with earlier versions; the old version is still available 316as -mdoc.old. The grog script has been enhanced so that it can 317usually determine whether a document requires the old or new versions. 318 319With -TX75, -TX100 and -TXps, the PSPIC macro will produce a box 320around where the picture would appear with -Tps. 321 322VERSION 1.04 323============ 324 325An implementation of the -mm macros is included. 326 327The directory in which temporary files are created can be controlled 328by setting the GROFF_TMPDIR or TMPDIR environment variables. 329 330Pic 331--- 332 333Some MS-DOS support (see pic/make-dos-dist). 334 335Grops 336----- 337 338There are two new \X commands (\X'ps: invis' and \X'ps: endinvis') 339which make it possible to have substitute characters that are 340displayed when previewing with -TXps but ignored when printing with 341grops. 342 343Xditview 344-------- 345 346Support for scalable fonts. 347 348VERSION 1.03 349============ 350 351No changes other than bug fixes. 352 353VERSION 1.02 354============ 355 356There is an implementation of refer and associated programs. groff -R 357preprocesses with grefer; no mechanism is provided for passing 358arguments to grefer because most grefer options have equivalent 359commands which can be included in the file. grog also supports refer. 360 361There is an alternative perl implementation of the grog script. 362 363The code field in lines in the charset section of font description 364files is now allowed to contain an arbitrary integer (previously it 365was required to lie between 0 and 255). Currently grops and grodvi 366use only the low order 8 bits of the value. Grodvi will use the 367complete value; however, this is unlikely to be useful with 368traditional TeX tools (.tfm files only allow 8 bit character codes.) 369 370Left and right double quotes can be obtained with \(lq and \(rq 371respectively. 372 373There is a new program called pfbtops which translates PostScript 374fonts in pfb format to ASCII. 375 376A slightly modified version of the Berkeley tmac.doc is included. 377 378Troff 379----- 380 381In long escape names the closing ] is now required to be at the same 382input level as the opening [. 383 384The \A'S' escape sequence returns 1 or 0 according as S is or is not 385suitable for use as a name. 386 387\~ produces an unbreakable space that can be stretched when the line 388is adjusted. 389 390The `mso' request is like the `so' request except that it searches for 391the file in the same directories in which tmac.X is searched for when 392the -mX option is given. 393 394The escape sequence `\R' is similar to the `nr' request. 395 396Eqn 397--- 398 399A new `special' primitive allows you to add new types of unary 400constructs by writing a troff macro. 401 402Pic 403--- 404 405The implementation no longer uses gperf. 406 407Grops 408----- 409 410The compile-time -DBROKEN_SPOOLER option has been replaced by a 411BROKEN_SPOOLER_FLAGS option. This allows more precise control over 412how grops should workaround broken spoolers and previewers. There is 413a new -b option that can change this at run-time. 414 415Grops now generates PostScript that complies with version 3.0 of the 416Document Structuring Convention. 417 418The resource management component of grops (the part that deals with 419imported documents and downloadable fonts) has been rewritten and now 420supports version 3.0 of the Document Structuring Conventions. The 421%%DocumentFonts comment is no longer supported; you must use the 422%%Document{Needed,Supplied}{Fonts,Resources} comments instead 423(or as well.) 424 425tmac.psatk contains some macros that support the mechanism used by the 426Andrew Toolkit for including PostScript graphics in troff documents. 427 428Xditview 429-------- 430 431Parts of xditview have been rewritten so that it can be used with the 432output of gtroff -Tps. groff -TXps will run gtroff -Tps with 433gxditview. 434 435There is a new menu entry `Print' which brings up a dialog box for 436specifying a command with which the file being previewed should be 437printed. 438 439Xditview now uses imake. 440 441VERSION 1.01 442============ 443 444The groff command now understands the gtroff `-a' and `-i' options. 445 446With the `m' and `n' scale indicators, the scale factor is rounded 447horizontally before being applied. This makes (almost) no difference 448for devices with `hor' equal to 1, but it makes groff with -Tascii or 449-Tlatin1 behave more like nroff in its treatment of these scale 450indicators. Accordingly tmac.tty now calls the `nroff' request so 451that the `n' condition will be true. 452 453The device-specific macros (tmac.ps, tmac.dvi, tmac.tty and tmac.X) 454have been made to work at least somewhat with -C. In particular the 455special characters defined by these macros now work with -C. 456 457groff -Tdvi -p will now pass pic the -x flag; this will enable filling 458of arrowheads and boxes, provided that your dvi driver supports the 459latest version of the tpic specials. 460 461Eqn 462--- 463 464There is a new `-N' option that tells eqn not to allow newlines in 465delimiters. This allows eqn to recover better from missing closing 466delimiters. The groff command will pass on a `-N' option to eqn. 467 468Grops 469----- 470 471You can now use psfig with grops. See the file ps/psfig.diff. I do 472not recommend using psfig for new documents. 473 474The command \X'ps: file F' is similar to \X'ps: exec ...' except that 475the PostScript code is read from the file F instead of being contained 476within the \X command. This was added to support psfig. 477 478Grodvi 479------ 480 481There are font files HB and HI corresponding to cmsssbx10 and cmssi10. 482 483Macros 484------ 485 486The groff -me macros now work with the -C option. As a result, they 487may also work with Unix nroff/troff. 488 489In -me, the $r and $R number registers now contain the line spacing as 490a percentage of the pointsize expressed in units (normally about 120). 491The previous definition was useless with low resolution devices such 492as X75 and X100. 493 494VERSION 1.00 495============ 496 497A -ms-like macro-package is now included. 498 499The name for the Icelandic lowercase eth character has been changed 500from \(-d to \(Sd. 501 502Troff 503----- 504 505There is a new request `nroff', which makes the `n' built-in condition 506true and the `t' built-in condition false; also a new request `troff' 507which undoes the effect of the `nroff' request. This is intended only 508for backward compatibility: it is usually better to test \n(.H or 509\n(.V or to use the `c' built-in condition. 510 511The \R escape sequence has been deleted. Use \E instead. 512 513There are `break' and `continue' requests for use with the `while' 514request. 515 516There is a request `hym' that can ensure that when the current 517adjustment mode is not `b' a line will not be hyphenated if it is no 518more than a given amount short, and a request `hys' that can ensure 519that when the current adjustment mode is `b' a line will not be 520hyphenated if it can be justified by adding no more than a given 521amount of extra space to each word space. 522 523There is a request `rj' similar to `ce' that right justifies lines. 524 525A warning of type `space' will be given when a call is made to an 526undefined request or macro with a name longer than two characters, and 527the first two characters of the name make a name that is defined. 528This is intended to find places where a space has been omitted been a 529request or macro and its argument. This type of warning is enabled by 530default. 531 532Pic 533--- 534 535A comma is permitted between the arguments to the `reset' command. 536 537For use with TeX, there is a new `-c' option that makes gpic treat 538lines beginning with `.' in a way that is more compatible with tpic 539(but ugly). 540 541Eqn 542--- 543 544It is no longer necessary to add `space 0' at the beginning of 545complicated equations inside pictures. 546 547`prime' is now treated as an ordinary character, as in Unix eqn. The 548previous behaviour of `prime' as an operator can now be obtained using 549`opprime'. 550 551Xditview 552-------- 553 554There are two new devices X75-12 and X100-12 which are the same as X75 555and X100 except that they are optimized for documents that use mostly 55612 point text. 557 558VERSION 0.6 559=========== 560 561The installation process has been refined to make it easy for you to 562share groff with someone who has the same type of machine as you but 563does not have a C++ compiler. See the end of the INSTALL file for 564details. 565 566There is a man page for the tfmtodit program which explains how to use 567your own fonts with groff -Tdvi. 568 569There is a man page for afmtodit which explains how to use your own 570PostScript fonts with groff -Tps. 571 572The \N escape sequence is now fully supported. It can now be used to 573access any character in a font by its output code, even if it doesn't 574have a groff name. This is made possible by a convention in the font 575files that a character name of `---' refers to an unnamed character. 576The drivers now all support the `N' command required for this. The font 577description files have been updated to include unnamed characters. 578 579The `x' command in font description files has been removed: instead 580any unknown commands are automatically made available to the drivers. 581If you constructed your own font files with an earlier version of 582tfmtodit or afmtodit, you must construct them again using the current 583version. 584 585Characters between 0200 and 0237 octal are no longer legal input 586characters. Note that these are not used in ISO 8859. 587 588A command called `grog' has been added, similar to the `doctype' 589command described in Kernighan and Pike. 590 591Groff 592----- 593 594The groff command has some new options: -V prints the pipeline 595instead of executing it; -P passes an argument to the postprocessor, 596-L passes an argument to the spooler. 597 598There is a C++ implementation of the groff command. This handles some 599things slightly better than the shell script. In particular, it can 600correctly handle arguments containing characters that have a special 601meaning to the shell; it can give an error message when child 602processes other than the last in the pipeline terminate abnormally; 603its exit status can take account of the exit statuses of all its child 604processes; it is a little more efficient; when geqn is used, it 605searches for the eqnchar file in the same way that font metric files 606are searched for, rather than expecting to find it in one particular 607directory. 608 609Gtroff 610------ 611 612There is font translation feature: For example, you can tell gtroff to 613use font `HR' whenever font `H' is requested with the line 614 .ftr H HR 615This would be useful for a document that uses `H' to refer to 616Helvetica. 617 618There are some new number registers: `.kern' contains the current kern 619mode, `.lg' the current ligature mode, `.x' the major version number, 620`.y' the minor version number, `.ce' the number of lines to be 621centered in the current environment, `.trunc' the amount of vertical 622space truncated by the most recently sprung vertical position trap, 623`.ne' the amount of vertical space needed in the last `ne' request 624that caused a vertical position trap to be sprung. 625 626The `cf' request now behaves sensibly in a diversion. If used in a 627diversion, it will now arrange for the file to be copied to the output 628when the diversion is reread. 629 630There is a new request `trf' (transparent file) similar to `cf', but 631more like `\!'. 632 633There is a new escape sequence `\Y[xxx]', roughly equivalent to 634`\X'\*[xxx]'', except that the contents of string or macro xxx are not 635interpreted, and xxx may contain newlines. This requires an output 636format extension; the drivers have been modified to understand this. 637Grops has also been modified to cope with newlines in the arguments to 638\X commands; grops has a new \X command mdef, which is like def except 639that it has a first argument giving the number of definitions. 640 641There is a new warning category `escape' which warns about unknown 642escape sequences. 643 644The `fp' request now takes an optional third argument giving the external 645name of the font. 646 647The `\_' character is now automatically translated to `\(ul' as in troff. 648 649The environment variable `GROFF_HYPHEN' gives the name of the file 650containing the hyphenation patterns. 651 652There is a `\C'xxx'' escape sequence equivalent to `\[xxx]'. 653 654Characters ", ', ), ], *, \(dg are now initially transparent for the purposes 655of end of sentence recognition. 656 657There is an anti-recursion feature in the `char' request, so you can 658say `.char \(bu \s+2\(bu\s-2'. 659 660The limit on the number of font positions has been removed. 661Accordingly `\n[.fp]' never returns 0. 662 663The restriction on the number of numbered environments has been removed. 664 665There is a new escape sequence `\E' that makes it possible to 666guarantee that an escape sequence won't get interpreted in copy-mode. 667The `\R' escape sequence is accordingly now deprecated. 668 669Gpic 670---- 671 672Arguments of the form `X anything X' (in the `copy thru', `sh', `for', 673`if' and `define' constructs) can now be of the form `{ anything }'. 674 675If the `linethick' variable is negative (as it now is initially), 676lines will be drawn with a thickness proportional to the current point 677size. 678 679The `rand' function now takes no arguments and returns a number between 6800 and 1. The old syntax is still supported. 681 682`^' can be used in expressions to indicate exponentiation. 683 684In the `for' construct the argument to the by clause can be prefixed 685by `*' to indicate that the increment is multiplicative. 686 687A bare expression may be used as an attribute. If the current 688direction is `dir', then an attribute `expr' is equivalent to 689`dir expr' 690 691There is a `sprintf' construct that allows numbers to be formatted and used 692wherever a quoted string can be used. 693 694The height of a text object without an explicit height attribute is 695the number of text strings associated with the object times the value 696of the `textht' variable. 697 698The maximum height and width of a picture is controlled by the 699`maxpswid' and `maxpsht' variables. 700 701Gtbl 702---- 703 704Gtbl can now handle gracefully the situation where the `ce' request 705has been applied to a table. 706 707Geqn 708---- 709 710The `ifdef' primitive has been generalized. 711 712A tilde accent can be put underneath a box using `utilde'. This 713defined using a general `uaccent' primitive. 714 715Grops 716----- 717 718There is a new PostScript font downloading scheme which handles font 719downloading for imported illustrations. Previously, the name of the 720file containing the font was given in the `x download' line in the 721groff font metric file. Now, there is a `download' file which says 722for each PostScript font name which file contains that font. Grops 723can also now handle inter-font dependencies, where one downloadable 724font depends on some other (possibly downloadable) font. 725 726The `T' font has been removed. The characters it used to provide are 727now provided by `char' definitions in tmac.ps. TSymbol.ps has also 728been removed, and the tweaks it provided are now provided by `char' 729definitions. 730