groff (software)

groff (/ˈdʒiːrɒf/ JEE-roff)[5] (also called GNU troff) is a typesetting system that creates formatted output when given plain text mixed with formatting commands.[6] It is the GNU replacement for the troff and nroff text formatters.

groff
Original author(s)James Clark
Developer(s)GNU Project
Initial releaseJune 1990 (1990-06)
Stable release
1.23.0[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 7 July 2023
Repository
Written inC++
TypeTypesetting
License2009: GPL-3.0-or-later[lower-alpha 1]
1992: GPL-2.0-or-later[lower-alpha 2]
1990: GPL-1.0-or-later[lower-alpha 3]
Websitegnu.org/software/groff/

Groff contains a large number of helper programs, preprocessors, and postprocessors including eqn, tbl, pic and soelim. There are also several macro packages included that duplicate, expand on the capabilities of, or outright replace the standard troff macro packages.

Groff development of new features is active, and is an important part of free, open source, and UNIX derived operating systems such as Linux and 4.4BSD derivatives — notably because troff macros are used to create man pages, the standard form of documentation on Unix and Unix-like systems.

OpenBSD has replaced groff with mandoc in the base install, since their 4.9 release,[7] as has macOS Ventura.

History

groff is an original implementation written primarily in C++ by James Clark and is modeled after ditroff, including many extensions. The first version, 0.3.1, was released June 1990. The first stable version, 1.04, was announced in November 1991. groff was developed as free software to provide an easily obtained replacement for the standard AT&T troff/nroff package, which at the time was proprietary, and was not always available even on branded UNIX systems. In 1999, Werner Lemberg and Ted Harding took over maintenance of groff.[8]

See also

Notes
  1. GPL-3.0-or-later since 2009-01-04.[2]
  2. GPL-2.0-or-later from 1992-08-03 until 2009-01-04.[3]
  3. GPL-1.0-or-later from 1990 until 1992-08-01.[4]

References
  1. Bertrand Garrigues (7 July 2023). "Groff version 1.23.0". Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  2. "1.20: Update GPL2 to GPL3".
  3. "1.06: ChangeLog".
  4. "1.02: groff.c".
  5. Laha, Manas. "An Introduction to the GNU Groff Text Processing System"
  6. "GNU troff (Groff) — a GNU project". www.gnu.org. Retrieved 2017-01-28. Groff (GNU troff) is a typesetting system that reads plain text mixed with formatting commands and produces formatted output.
  7. Changes made between OpenBSD 4.8 and 4.9
  8. FFII-Nachrichten 1999 Woche 20.
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