NEWS revision 69626
1This file describes recent user-visible changes in groff. Bug fixes 2are not described. There are more details in the man pages. 3 4VERSION 1.16.1 5============== 6 7Bug fixes only; no user-visible changes. 8 9VERSION 1.16 10============ 11 12Groff 13----- 14 15The anachronism of calling the man macro package with `-man' has been fixed; 16now you can say `-m man' also. The same is true for `ms', `me', `markup', 17`mandoc', and `mdoc'. 18 19A new switch `-g' for calling `grn' is available. 20 21A new switch `-G' for calling `grap' is available. 22 23EBCDIC support for tty devices has been added. On such hosts, IBM code page 241047 is available with -Tcp1047 instead of -Tascii and -Tlatin1 (and, for 25the moment, -Tutf8). Note that non-tty devices are not yet supported (but 26installed). 27 28Troff 29----- 30 31A new command line option to the `man' macros is available: `-rSxx' (with 32`xx' either 10, 11, or 12) to set the base document font size to `xx' 33points. Additionally, `.SH' now produces larger headings than `.SS'. 34 35To solve a problem with the .PSPIC macro which needs the `-U' switch of 36troff to access an external program (psbb), a new request .psbb is now 37available to get the bounding box of a PostScript image file. The values 38(in PostScript units) are returned in the new read-only number registers 39`llx', `lly', `urx', and `ury'. Consequently, .PSPIC has been adapted to 40use the new request, and the psbb program has been removed. 41 42A new predefined writable number register, `year', has been added. It 43contains the current year. 44 45A new read-only register, `.Y', has been added. It contains the revision 46number of the groff package. 47 48`\fP' now behaves as expected in situations like the following where the 49font `foo' is undefined: 50 51 .B bold text 52 normal text \f[foo]bar\fP normal text 53 54Previously, the text after \fP appeared as bold. 55 56The `substring' request is not new, but hasn't been documented before. 57 58The predefined `.T' string register (which holds the current output device) 59is not new, but hasn't been documented before. 60 61A new request `length' computes the length of a string and returns it in 62a number register. 63 64The macro files `tmac.a4' (for specifying A4 paper format) and `tmac.trace' 65(a debugging aid) are now installed also. 66 67A new resource file, `troffrc-end', is now available. It is invoked after 68all user-specified macros. Currently used by the html device to include 69tmac.html; thus no need for users to specify -mhtml anymore. 70 71The soft hyphen character now has a glyph name: `shc'. 72 73The latin-1 character 173 (PS name `periodcentered') has got the troff glyph 74name `pc' and is no longer intermixed with the symbol character `md' (PS 75name `mathdot'). 76 77ASCII character 34 (PS name `quotedbl') has got the troff glyph name `dq' 78(which is an alias to character `"'). 79 80ASCII character 39 (PS name `quoteright') has got the troff glyph name `cq' 81(which is an alias to character "'"). 82 83Some additions to the font description files have been implemented for 84better support of HTML output: 85 86 The new format of lines in the `charset' subsection of font description 87 files is 88 89 name metrics type code [entity_name] [-- comment] 90 91 Currently, only the font description files in devhtml use the optional 92 entity_name string to define glyph entities in HTML. Everything after the 93 entity_name field is ignored; in case this field isn't used, two hyphen 94 characters are now necessary to start a comment. 95 96 Two new requests are available in DESC files (currently used only with 97 grohtml): 98 99 use_charnames_in_special 100 This command indicates that troff should encode named characters 101 inside special commands. 102 103 pass_filenames 104 requests that troff tells the driver the source file name being 105 processed. This is achieved by another tcommand: `F filename'. 106 107Grotty 108------ 109 110Bruno Haible <haible@clisp.cons.org> contributed support for UTF8 output. 111 112Grohtml 113------- 114 115Added .LINE macro to tmac.arkup. 116 117The obsolete `.LINK' macro has been removed. 118 119.URL, .FTP, and .MAILTO macros now accept an optional third argument which 120will be immediately appended to the second argument (to be used with 121punctuation, for example). 122 123Grodvi 124------ 125 126The font size 11pt has been changed to 10.95pt (as used in LaTeX 2e). 127 128A new font file CWI (using cmitt10; this is typewriter italic) has been 129added. 130 131Grolbp 132------ 133 134A new driver for Canon CAPSL printers (LBP-4 and LBP-8 series laser 135printers). This code has been contributed by Francisco Andres Verdu 136<pandres@dragonet.es>. 137 138Grn 139--- 140 141A new preprocessor to process gremlin pictures. It is based on the 142original Berkeley implementation of grn, written by David Slattengren 143and Barry Roitblat, and has been adapted to groff by Daniel Senderowicz 144<daniel@synchrods.com> and Werner Lemberg <wl@gnu.org>. 145 146Pic 147--- 148 149Added the `srand' command to set the seed for a new sequence of 150pseudo-random numbers to be returned by `rand'. 151 152Gxditview 153--------- 154 155Simplified installation: The Imakefile will now be configured (by groff's 156configure script). 157 158Documentation 159------------- 160 161Three new man pages are available: groff_tmac.5 (documenting how troff macros 162are accessed and where they are found), groff.7 (a short reference of the GNU 163roff language), and roff.7 (a general survey on GNU troff). 164 165Miscellaneous 166------------- 167 168A port to win32 (for use with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0) is now part of the 169distribution. It has been contributed by Blake McBride 170<blake@florida-software.com>. 171 172More information about programs, macros, documentation, etc., which is 173related to groff has been collected in the file `MORE.STUFF'. 174 175VERSION 1.13, 1.14, 1.15 176======================== 177 178Bug fixes only; no user-visible changes. 179 180VERSION 1.12 181============ 182 183Finally, there are new maintainers for groff. Mailing lists and a CVS 184repository are available also. See the file README for details. Not 185all reported bug could be fixed, so please send mails again if 186something is still not working. 187 188Most of the installation problems should have vanished now (most 189notably the $(tmac_wrap) bug). 190 191There is now a man page called groff_man.man which documents the 192basics of the -man macros. It has been originally written by Susan 193G. Kleinmann <sgk@debian.org>. 194 195A (still incomplete) groff reference manual in texinfo format 196originally contributed by Trent A. Fisher <trent@gnurd.portland.or.us>. 197 198me.man and msafer.man have been renamed to groff_me.man 199resp. groff_msafer.man for consistency. 200 201Default strings for macros in doc-common resp. tmac.an no longer 202contain the word `UNIX'. 203 204groff should now be Y2k safe (fixes contributed by Paul Eggert 205<eggert@twinsun.com>). 206 207Following the GNU standards, groff will now use the prefix 208`/usr/local/' as the default instead of replacing an existent groff 209binary. 210 211groff, troff, nroff, and pic now support the -U flag to activate unsafe 212behaviour (without -msafer); the -S flag for using the -msafer macros 213is now the default. 214 215Grohtml 216------- 217 218This is a new output device for producing HTML output contributed by 219Gaius Mulley <gaius@glam.ac.uk>. It is still very alpha but has been 220included into the distribution so that a lot of people have a chance 221to test it. Bug reports are highly welcome. 222 223Grolj4 224------ 225 226Duplex printing support has been contributed by Jeffrey Copeland 227<jeff@opennt.com>. 228 229Soelim 230------ 231 232Added -I option for defining include paths (patch contributed by Peter 233Miller <peterm@jna.com.au>). 234 235Gxditview 236--------- 237 238Fallback resources added (patch contributed by Larry Jones 239<larry.jones@sdrc.com>). 240 241Will now support 8 gray levels. 242 243mm 244-- 245 246New version 1.32 (contributed by Joergen Haegg <jh@axis.com>). 247 248VERSION 1.11 249============ 250 251Complete documentation for pic is now in the file doc/pic.ms. It was 252contributed by Eric S. Raymond, <esr@thyrsus.com>, who is emphatically 253*not* volunteering to take over groff as he is way overworked with 254half a dozen other projects. 255 256VERSION 1.10 257============ 258 259The directory where data files are installed has been changed from 260/usr/local/lib/groff to /usr/local/share/groff to comply with the 261latest GNU coding standards. 262 263By default groff programs with Unix equivalents are installed with a 264"g" prefix unless there is an existing (non-groff) troff installation. 265 266A new approach is used to make system macro packages available to 267groff. Instead of simply including /usr/lib/tmac in the list of 268directories searched by groff, the installation process creates for 269each system macro package a wrapper macro package in the groff macro 270directory that references the system macro package. The groff macro 271packages are now installed with a leading "g" prefix if there is a 272system version of the same macro package, and otherwise without the 273"g" prefix, with the exception that the groff version of -me which is 274always installed as -me. 275 276There is a new device, lj4, for the HP LaserJet 4 (and PCL5 277compatibles). 278 279Groff 280----- 281 282groff has a -S option that prevents the use of unsafe features in pic 283and troff. This uses a new -S option of pic and the -msafer macros 284for troff. 285 286Troff 287----- 288 289The `blm' request specifies a macro to be invoked when a blank line is 290encountered. 291 292Pic 293--- 294 295A -S (safer) option disables the sh command. 296 297Grops 298----- 299 300The -m option enables manual feed. 301 302VERSION 1.09 303============ 304 305\(rn will now produce a character that has the traditional metrics, 306and will form corners with \(ul and \(br. This means that it will not 307align properly with \(sr. Instead there's a new character 308\[radicalex] which aligns with \(sr; this is used by eqn for doing 309square roots. 310 311Troff 312----- 313 314The `pso' request allows you to read from the standard output of a 315command. 316 317Grops 318----- 319 320The PSPIC macro has options to allow the horizontal alignment of the 321graphic to be specified. 322 323VERSION 1.08 324============ 325 326Troff 327----- 328 329The escape sequence \V[xxx] will interpolate the value of the 330environment variable xxx. 331 332Tbl 333--- 334 335The decimalpoint option can be used to specify the character to be 336recognized as the decimal point character in place of the default 337period. 338 339VERSION 1.07 340============ 341 342Groff 343----- 344 345The environment variable GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX can be used to control 346whether groff looks for `gtroff' or `troff' (similarily for the 347preprocessors.) 348 349Troff 350----- 351 352Multilingual hyphenation is supported by new `hpf' and `hla' requests, 353and by a `\n[.hla]' number register. The -H option has been removed. 354Files of hyphenation patterns can have comments. 355 356When a font cannot be found, troff gives a warning (of type `font', 357enabled by default) instead of an error. 358 359There's a new request `trnt' that's like `tr' except that it doesn't 360apply to text transparently throughput into a diversion with \!. 361 362Tbl 363--- 364 365There is a `nokeep' option which tells tbl not to use diversions to 366try to keep the table on one page. 367 368Eqn 369--- 370 371Setting the parameter `nroff' to a non-zero value causes `ndefine' to 372behave like `define' and `tdefine' to be ignored. This is done by 373eqnrc when the current device is ascii or latin1. There's a `neqn' 374script that just does `eqn -Tascii'. 375 376Grotty 377------ 378 379grotty uses whatever page length was specified using the `pl' request 380rather than using the paperlength command in the DESC file. The 381paperwidth command in the DESC file is also ignored. 382 383VERSION 1.06 384============ 385 386The programs in groff that have Unix counterparts can now be installed 387without a leading `g' prefix. See the `g' variable in the Makefile. 388 389The g?nroff script simulates the nroff command using groff. 390 391New special characters \(+h, \(+f, \(+p, \(Fn, \(Bq, \(bq, \(aq, \(lz, 392\(an. See groff_char(7). 393 394^L is now a legal input character. 395 396Groff 397----- 398 399The Xps pseudo-device has disappeared. Instead there is a new -X 400option that tells groff to use gxditview instead of the usual 401postprocessor. (So instead of -TXps, use -XTps or just -X if your 402default device is ps.) 403 404The postprocessor to be used for a particular device is now specified 405by a `postpro' command in the DESC file rather than being compiled 406into groff. Similarly the command to be used for printing (with the 407-l option) is now specified by a `print' command in the DESC file. 408 409The groff command no longer specifies eqnchar as an input file for 410eqn. Instead eqn automatically loads a file `eqnrc'. The groff 411command no longer passes the -D option to eqn. Instead eqnrc sets the 412draw_lines parameter. 413 414The groff command no longer tells troff to load a device-specific 415macro file. This is handled instead by the `troffrc' file, which is 416always loaded by troff. 417 418The shell script version of groff has been removed. 419 420Troff 421----- 422 423The `rchar' request removes a character definition established with `char'. 424 425Compatibility mode is disabled and the escape character is set to `\' 426while a character definition is being processed. 427 428The `\#' escape sequence is like `\"' except that the terminating 429newline is ignored. 430 431The `shc' request tells troff which character to insert (instead of 432the default \(hy) when a word is hyphenated at a line break. 433 434A font name of 0 (zero) in the DESC file will cause no font to be 435mounted on the corresponding font position. This is useful for 436arranging that special fonts are mounted on positions on which users 437are not likely explicitly to mount fonts. All groff devices now avoid 438initially mounting fonts on positions 5-9. 439 440The `do' request allows a single request or macro to be interpreted 441with compatibility mode disabled. 442 443troff automatically loads a file `troffrc' before any other input file. 444This can be prevented with the -R option. This file is responsible 445for loading the device-specific macros. 446 447Pic 448--- 449 450The -x option has been removed and a -n option has been added. By 451default, pic now assumes that the postprocessor supports groff 452extensions. The -n option tells pic to generate output that works 453with ditroff drivers. The -z option now applies only to TeX mode. 454 455The -p option has been removed. Instead if the -n option is not 456specified, pic generates output that uses \X'ps: ...' if the \n(0p 457register is non-zero and tmac.ps sets this register to 1. 458 459In places where you could 1st or 5th you can now say `i'th or `i+1'th 460(the quotes are required). 461 462Eqn 463--- 464 465Eqn now automatically reads a file `eqnrc' from the macro directory. 466This performs the same role that the eqnchar files used to. This can 467be prevented by the -R option. 468 469Setting the draw_lines parameter to a non-zero value causes lines to 470be drawn using \D rather than \l. The -D option is now obsolete. 471 472`uparrow', `downarrow' and `updownarrow' can be used with `left' and 473`right'. 474 475The amount of extra space added before and after lines containing 476equations can be controlled using the `body_height' and `body_depth' 477parameters. 478 479Grops 480----- 481 482Font description files have been regenerated from newer AFM files. 483You can get access to the additional characters present in the text 484fonts in newer PostScript printers by using -mpsnew. 485 486The default value of the -b option is specified by a `broken' command 487in the DESC file. 488 489With the -g option, grops will generate PostScript code that guesses 490the page height. This allows documents to be printed on both letter 491(8.5x11) and A4 paper without change. 492 493Grodvi 494------ 495 496ISO Latin-1 characters are available with -Tdvi. Format groff_char(7) 497with groff -Tdvi for more information. 498 499Grotty 500------ 501 502The -mtty-char macros contain additional character definitions for 503use with grotty. 504 505Macros 506------ 507 508In previous releases the groff -me macros treated the $r and $R number 509registers in a way that was incompatible with the BSD -me macros. The 510reason for this was that the approach used by the BSD -me macros does 511not work with low resolution devices such as -TX75 and -TX100. 512However, this caused problems with existing -me documents. In this 513release, the vertical spacing is controlled by the $v and $V registers 514which have the same meaning as $r and $R in earlier groff releases. 515In addition, if the $r or $R register is set to a value that would be 516correct for for the BSD -me macros and a low resolution device is not 517being used, then an appropriate value for the $v or $V register will 518be derived from the $r or $R register. 519 520The groff -me macros work with -C and (I think) with Unix troff. 521 522For backward compatibility with BSD -me, the \*{ and \*} strings are 523also available as \*[ and \*]. Of course, \*[ will only be usable 524with -C. 525 526The \*T string has been deleted. Use \*(Tm instead. 527 528Xditview 529-------- 530 531The `n', Space and Return keys are bound to the Next Page action. The 532`p', BackSpace and Delete keys are bound to the Previous Page action. 533The `q' key is bound to the Quit action. 534 535The `r' key is bound to a rerasterize action that reruns groff, and 536redisplays the current page. 537 538VERSION 1.05 539============ 540 541Pic 542--- 543 544There is a alternative assignment operator `:=' which interacts 545differently with blocks. 546 547There is a new command `command', which allows the values of variables 548to be passed through to troff or TeX. 549 550The `print' command now accepts multiple arguments. 551 552String comparison expressions (using `==' or `!=') are allowed in more 553contexts. 554 555Grotty 556------ 557 558Horizontal and vertical lines drawn with \D'l ...' will be rendered 559using -, | and + characters. This is intended to give reasonable 560results with boxed tables. It won't work well with pic. 561 562Macros 563------ 564 565The -mdoc macros have been upgraded to the version in the second 566Berkeley networking release. This version is not completely 567compatible with earlier versions; the old version is still available 568as -mdoc.old. The grog script has been enhanced so that it can 569usually determine whether a document requires the old or new versions. 570 571With -TX75, -TX100 and -TXps, the PSPIC macro will produce a box 572around where the picture would appear with -Tps. 573 574VERSION 1.04 575============ 576 577An implementation of the -mm macros is included. 578 579The directory in which temporary files are created can be controlled 580by setting the GROFF_TMPDIR or TMPDIR environment variables. 581 582Pic 583--- 584 585Some MS-DOS support (see pic/make-dos-dist). 586 587Grops 588----- 589 590There are two new \X commands (\X'ps: invis' and \X'ps: endinvis') 591which make it possible to have substitute characters that are 592displayed when previewing with -TXps but ignored when printing with 593grops. 594 595Xditview 596-------- 597 598Support for scalable fonts. 599 600VERSION 1.03 601============ 602 603No changes other than bug fixes. 604 605VERSION 1.02 606============ 607 608There is an implementation of refer and associated programs. groff -R 609preprocesses with grefer; no mechanism is provided for passing 610arguments to grefer because most grefer options have equivalent 611commands which can be included in the file. grog also supports refer. 612 613There is an alternative perl implementation of the grog script. 614 615The code field in lines in the charset section of font description 616files is now allowed to contain an arbitrary integer (previously it 617was required to lie between 0 and 255). Currently grops and grodvi 618use only the low order 8 bits of the value. Grodvi will use the 619complete value; however, this is unlikely to be useful with 620traditional TeX tools (.tfm files only allow 8 bit character codes.) 621 622Left and right double quotes can be obtained with \(lq and \(rq 623respectively. 624 625There is a new program called pfbtops which translates PostScript 626fonts in pfb format to ASCII. 627 628A slightly modified version of the Berkeley tmac.doc is included. 629 630Troff 631----- 632 633In long escape names the closing ] is now required to be at the same 634input level as the opening [. 635 636The \A'S' escape sequence returns 1 or 0 according as S is or is not 637suitable for use as a name. 638 639\~ produces an unbreakable space that can be stretched when the line 640is adjusted. 641 642The `mso' request is like the `so' request except that it searches for 643the file in the same directories in which tmac.X is searched for when 644the -mX option is given. 645 646The escape sequence `\R' is similar to the `nr' request. 647 648Eqn 649--- 650 651A new `special' primitive allows you to add new types of unary 652constructs by writing a troff macro. 653 654Pic 655--- 656 657The implementation no longer uses gperf. 658 659Grops 660----- 661 662The compile-time -DBROKEN_SPOOLER option has been replaced by a 663BROKEN_SPOOLER_FLAGS option. This allows more precise control over 664how grops should workaround broken spoolers and previewers. There is 665a new -b option that can change this at run-time. 666 667Grops now generates PostScript that complies with version 3.0 of the 668Document Structuring Convention. 669 670The resource management component of grops (the part that deals with 671imported documents and downloadable fonts) has been rewritten and now 672supports version 3.0 of the Document Structuring Conventions. The 673%%DocumentFonts comment is no longer supported; you must use the 674%%Document{Needed,Supplied}{Fonts,Resources} comments instead 675(or as well.) 676 677tmac.psatk contains some macros that support the mechanism used by the 678Andrew Toolkit for including PostScript graphics in troff documents. 679 680Xditview 681-------- 682 683Parts of xditview have been rewritten so that it can be used with the 684output of gtroff -Tps. groff -TXps will run gtroff -Tps with 685gxditview. 686 687There is a new menu entry `Print' which brings up a dialog box for 688specifying a command with which the file being previewed should be 689printed. 690 691Xditview now uses imake. 692 693VERSION 1.01 694============ 695 696The groff command now understands the gtroff `-a' and `-i' options. 697 698With the `m' and `n' scale indicators, the scale factor is rounded 699horizontally before being applied. This makes (almost) no difference 700for devices with `hor' equal to 1, but it makes groff with -Tascii or 701-Tlatin1 behave more like nroff in its treatment of these scale 702indicators. Accordingly tmac.tty now calls the `nroff' request so 703that the `n' condition will be true. 704 705The device-specific macros (tmac.ps, tmac.dvi, tmac.tty and tmac.X) 706have been made to work at least somewhat with -C. In particular the 707special characters defined by these macros now work with -C. 708 709groff -Tdvi -p will now pass pic the -x flag; this will enable filling 710of arrowheads and boxes, provided that your dvi driver supports the 711latest version of the tpic specials. 712 713Eqn 714--- 715 716There is a new `-N' option that tells eqn not to allow newlines in 717delimiters. This allows eqn to recover better from missing closing 718delimiters. The groff command will pass on a `-N' option to eqn. 719 720Grops 721----- 722 723You can now use psfig with grops. See the file ps/psfig.diff. I do 724not recommend using psfig for new documents. 725 726The command \X'ps: file F' is similar to \X'ps: exec ...' except that 727the PostScript code is read from the file F instead of being contained 728within the \X command. This was added to support psfig. 729 730Grodvi 731------ 732 733There are font files HB and HI corresponding to cmsssbx10 and cmssi10. 734 735Macros 736------ 737 738The groff -me macros now work with the -C option. As a result, they 739may also work with Unix nroff/troff. 740 741In -me, the $r and $R number registers now contain the line spacing as 742a percentage of the pointsize expressed in units (normally about 120). 743The previous definition was useless with low resolution devices such 744as X75 and X100. 745 746VERSION 1.00 747============ 748 749A -ms-like macro-package is now included. 750 751The name for the Icelandic lowercase eth character has been changed 752from \(-d to \(Sd. 753 754Troff 755----- 756 757There is a new request `nroff', which makes the `n' built-in condition 758true and the `t' built-in condition false; also a new request `troff' 759which undoes the effect of the `nroff' request. This is intended only 760for backward compatibility: it is usually better to test \n(.H or 761\n(.V or to use the `c' built-in condition. 762 763The \R escape sequence has been deleted. Use \E instead. 764 765There are `break' and `continue' requests for use with the `while' 766request. 767 768There is a request `hym' that can ensure that when the current 769adjustment mode is not `b' a line will not be hyphenated if it is no 770more than a given amount short, and a request `hys' that can ensure 771that when the current adjustment mode is `b' a line will not be 772hyphenated if it can be justified by adding no more than a given 773amount of extra space to each word space. 774 775There is a request `rj' similar to `ce' that right justifies lines. 776 777A warning of type `space' will be given when a call is made to an 778undefined request or macro with a name longer than two characters, and 779the first two characters of the name make a name that is defined. 780This is intended to find places where a space has been omitted been a 781request or macro and its argument. This type of warning is enabled by 782default. 783 784Pic 785--- 786 787A comma is permitted between the arguments to the `reset' command. 788 789For use with TeX, there is a new `-c' option that makes gpic treat 790lines beginning with `.' in a way that is more compatible with tpic 791(but ugly). 792 793Eqn 794--- 795 796It is no longer necessary to add `space 0' at the beginning of 797complicated equations inside pictures. 798 799`prime' is now treated as an ordinary character, as in Unix eqn. The 800previous behaviour of `prime' as an operator can now be obtained using 801`opprime'. 802 803Xditview 804-------- 805 806There are two new devices X75-12 and X100-12 which are the same as X75 807and X100 except that they are optimized for documents that use mostly 80812 point text. 809 810VERSION 0.6 811=========== 812 813The installation process has been refined to make it easy for you to 814share groff with someone who has the same type of machine as you but 815does not have a C++ compiler. See the end of the INSTALL file for 816details. 817 818There is a man page for the tfmtodit program which explains how to use 819your own fonts with groff -Tdvi. 820 821There is a man page for afmtodit which explains how to use your own 822PostScript fonts with groff -Tps. 823 824The \N escape sequence is now fully supported. It can now be used to 825access any character in a font by its output code, even if it doesn't 826have a groff name. This is made possible by a convention in the font 827files that a character name of `---' refers to an unnamed character. 828The drivers now all support the `N' command required for this. The font 829description files have been updated to include unnamed characters. 830 831The `x' command in font description files has been removed: instead 832any unknown commands are automatically made available to the drivers. 833If you constructed your own font files with an earlier version of 834tfmtodit or afmtodit, you must construct them again using the current 835version. 836 837Characters between 0200 and 0237 octal are no longer legal input 838characters. Note that these are not used in ISO 8859. 839 840A command called `grog' has been added, similar to the `doctype' 841command described in Kernighan and Pike. 842 843Groff 844----- 845 846The groff command has some new options: -V prints the pipeline 847instead of executing it; -P passes an argument to the postprocessor, 848-L passes an argument to the spooler. 849 850There is a C++ implementation of the groff command. This handles some 851things slightly better than the shell script. In particular, it can 852correctly handle arguments containing characters that have a special 853meaning to the shell; it can give an error message when child 854processes other than the last in the pipeline terminate abnormally; 855its exit status can take account of the exit statuses of all its child 856processes; it is a little more efficient; when geqn is used, it 857searches for the eqnchar file in the same way that font metric files 858are searched for, rather than expecting to find it in one particular 859directory. 860 861Gtroff 862------ 863 864There is font translation feature: For example, you can tell gtroff to 865use font `HR' whenever font `H' is requested with the line 866 .ftr H HR 867This would be useful for a document that uses `H' to refer to 868Helvetica. 869 870There are some new number registers: `.kern' contains the current kern 871mode, `.lg' the current ligature mode, `.x' the major version number, 872`.y' the minor version number, `.ce' the number of lines to be 873centered in the current environment, `.trunc' the amount of vertical 874space truncated by the most recently sprung vertical position trap, 875`.ne' the amount of vertical space needed in the last `ne' request 876that caused a vertical position trap to be sprung. 877 878The `cf' request now behaves sensibly in a diversion. If used in a 879diversion, it will now arrange for the file to be copied to the output 880when the diversion is reread. 881 882There is a new request `trf' (transparent file) similar to `cf', but 883more like `\!'. 884 885There is a new escape sequence `\Y[xxx]', roughly equivalent to 886`\X'\*[xxx]'', except that the contents of string or macro xxx are not 887interpreted, and xxx may contain newlines. This requires an output 888format extension; the drivers have been modified to understand this. 889Grops has also been modified to cope with newlines in the arguments to 890\X commands; grops has a new \X command mdef, which is like def except 891that it has a first argument giving the number of definitions. 892 893There is a new warning category `escape' which warns about unknown 894escape sequences. 895 896The `fp' request now takes an optional third argument giving the external 897name of the font. 898 899The `\_' character is now automatically translated to `\(ul' as in troff. 900 901The environment variable `GROFF_HYPHEN' gives the name of the file 902containing the hyphenation patterns. 903 904There is a `\C'xxx'' escape sequence equivalent to `\[xxx]'. 905 906Characters ", ', ), ], *, \(dg are now initially transparent for the purposes 907of end of sentence recognition. 908 909There is an anti-recursion feature in the `char' request, so you can 910say `.char \(bu \s+2\(bu\s-2'. 911 912The limit on the number of font positions has been removed. 913Accordingly `\n[.fp]' never returns 0. 914 915The restriction on the number of numbered environments has been removed. 916 917There is a new escape sequence `\E' that makes it possible to 918guarantee that an escape sequence won't get interpreted in copy-mode. 919The `\R' escape sequence is accordingly now deprecated. 920 921Gpic 922---- 923 924Arguments of the form `X anything X' (in the `copy thru', `sh', `for', 925`if' and `define' constructs) can now be of the form `{ anything }'. 926 927If the `linethick' variable is negative (as it now is initially), 928lines will be drawn with a thickness proportional to the current point 929size. 930 931The `rand' function now takes no arguments and returns a number between 9320 and 1. The old syntax is still supported. 933 934`^' can be used in expressions to indicate exponentiation. 935 936In the `for' construct the argument to the by clause can be prefixed 937by `*' to indicate that the increment is multiplicative. 938 939A bare expression may be used as an attribute. If the current 940direction is `dir', then an attribute `expr' is equivalent to 941`dir expr' 942 943There is a `sprintf' construct that allows numbers to be formatted and used 944wherever a quoted string can be used. 945 946The height of a text object without an explicit height attribute is 947the number of text strings associated with the object times the value 948of the `textht' variable. 949 950The maximum height and width of a picture is controlled by the 951`maxpswid' and `maxpsht' variables. 952 953Gtbl 954---- 955 956Gtbl can now handle gracefully the situation where the `ce' request 957has been applied to a table. 958 959Geqn 960---- 961 962The `ifdef' primitive has been generalized. 963 964A tilde accent can be put underneath a box using `utilde'. This 965defined using a general `uaccent' primitive. 966 967Grops 968----- 969 970There is a new PostScript font downloading scheme which handles font 971downloading for imported illustrations. Previously, the name of the 972file containing the font was given in the `x download' line in the 973groff font metric file. Now, there is a `download' file which says 974for each PostScript font name which file contains that font. Grops 975can also now handle inter-font dependencies, where one downloadable 976font depends on some other (possibly downloadable) font. 977 978The `T' font has been removed. The characters it used to provide are 979now provided by `char' definitions in tmac.ps. TSymbol.ps has also 980been removed, and the tweaks it provided are now provided by `char' 981definitions. 982