groff 1.23 release candidate 3, 1.23.0.rc3, is now available from GNU's alpha site. You may download the distribution archive from there. https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/groff/ What is groff? ============== groff (GNU roff) is a typesetting system that reads plain text input files that include formatting commands to produce output in PostScript, PDF, HTML, or DVI formats or for display to a terminal. Formatting commands can be low-level typesetting primitives, macros from a supplied package, or user-defined macros. All three approaches can be combined. A reimplementation and extension of the typesetter from AT&T Unix, groff is present on most POSIX systems owing to its long association with Unix manuals (including man pages). It and its predecessor are notable for their production of several best-selling software engineering texts. groff is capable of producing typographically sophisticated documents while consuming minimal system resources. https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/ Changes ======= Release candidate 3 resolves a build problem on macOS 12, fixes several automated test failures on non-GNU/Linux hosts, improves gropdf's parsing of "papersize" directives in "DESC" files, and clarifies and corrects documentation. Since groff 1.22.4 was released in December 2018, 26 people have made a total of over 4,500 commits. $ git shortlog --summary --email 1.22.4..1.23.0.rc3 14 Bertrand Garrigues 14 Bjarni Ingi Gislason 6 Colin Watson 1 Cynthia A. E. Livingston 1 Damian McGuckin 30 Dave Kemper 28 Deri James 2 Dorai Sitaram 1 Edmond Orignac 1 Eric Allman 4419 G. Branden Robinson 1 George HELFFRICH 33 Ingo Schwarze 1 John Gardner 4 Keith Bostic 25 Keith Marshall 2 Michael J. Karels 1 Nate Bargmann 3 Nikita Ivanov 1 Paul Eggert 66 Peter Schaffter 1 Samanta Navarro 1 T. Kurt Bond 3 Tadziu Hoffmann 2 ivan tkachenko 1 наб (Some possibly surprising names in the above are due to a rebase of groff me(7) against 4.4BSD.) Headline features nominated by our development community include: * a new 'man' macro, "MR", for formatting man page cross references; * hyperlinked text in terminals via the ECMA-48 OSC 8 escape sequence; * a new 'rfc1345' macro package, contributed by Dorai Sitaram, enabling use of RFC 1345 mnemonics as groff special characters; * a new 'sboxes' macro package, contributed by Deri James, enabling 'ms' documents to place shaded and/or bordered rectangles underneath any groff page elements (PDF output only); * 'mom' 2.5, a macro package contributed by Peter Schaffter; * the 'ms' package's new strings to assist subscripting; * Italian localization, including hyphenation patterns and macro package string translations, thanks to Edmond Orignac; and * new hyphenation patterns for English. For more on these and other feature changes, see "News" below. Much attention has been given to fixing bugs, improving diagnostic messages, and correcting and expanding documentation. The previous release shipped with three automated unit tests; this one ships with over 160 unit and regression tests. As of this writing, per the GNU Savannah bug tracker, the groff project has resolved 416 problems as fixed for the 1.23.0 release. Some of the bugs we've corrected were over 30 years old. Classifying these issues by type and the component of the project to which they apply, we find the following. Type Component ---- --------- Build/installation 39 Core 96 Crash/unresponsive 11 Driver: grohtml 7 Documentation 101 Driver: gropdf 9 Feature change 40 Driver: grops 2 Incorrect behavior 129 Driver: grotty 4 Lint 15 Driver: others/general 8 Rendering/cosmetics 10 Font: devpdf 1 Test 4 Font: devps 3 Warning/suspicious behavior 67 Font: others/general 4 General 47 Macros: man 33 Macros: mdoc 13 Macros: me 36 Macros: mm 20 Macros: mom 11 Macros: ms 27 Macros: other/general 26 Preprocessor: eqn 5 Preprocessor: grn 3 Preprocessor: pic 5 Preprocessor: preconv 7 Preprocessor: refer 3 Preprocessor: tbl 23 Preprocessor: others/general 5 Utilities 18 Another way of capturing the amount of revision is as follows. $ git diff --stat 1.22.4 1.23.0.rc3 | tail -n 1 971 files changed, 131347 insertions(+), 73697 deletions(-) Obtaining groff =============== Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature[*]. https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/groff/groff-1.23.0.rc3.tar.gz https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/groff/groff-1.23.0.rc3.tar.gz.sig Here are the SHA-1 and SHA-256 checksums. b0042cfc612e117864411eda996e45d78f61c33f groff-1.23.0.rc3.tar.gz eZYHfT9yGTJWg14a/pkL277giK3HOShcSIku3535uio groff-1.23.0.rc3.tar.gz The SHA-256 checksum is encoded in Base64 instead of the hexadecimal form that most checksum tools default to. The mechanism follows. sha256sum < groff-1.23.0.rc3.tar.gz | cut -f1 -d\ | xxd -r -p | base64 [*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact. First, be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding archive. Then, verify the archive. gpg --verify groff-1.23.0.rc3.tar.gz{.sig,} If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, you can import it. wget -O 96214.asc \ 'https://savannah.gnu.org/people/viewgpg.php?user_id=96214' gpg --import 96214.asc Re-run the 'gpg --verify' command subsequently. Caveats ======= o A failure in automated testing occurs (if you run "make check") for gdiffmk if GNU diffutils 3.9 is used. This is a known problem with that release; see <https://debbugs.gnu.org/db/61/61193.html>. o Solaris has known problems with automated tests; see the "PROBLEMS" file in the distribution archive for a workaround procedure. News ==== troff ----- o The `troffrc` file now loads an English localization file instead of directly housing configuration parameters appropriate to the English language. See "Macro Packages" below. o A new read-only register `.cp` is implemented. Within a `do` request, "\n[.cp]" holds the saved value of compatibility mode. See groff_diff(7) or the groff Texinfo manual for rationale, use case, and example. o New read-only registers `.nm` and `.nn` are implemented. `.nm` is of Boolean sense, reporting the enablement status of output line numbering (caused by the `nm` request) irrespective of the temporary suspension of numbering with the `nn` request. `.nn` holds the count of numbered output lines still to have that numbering suppressed. These registers were introduced because there was no way for the formatter (and thus a document) to introspect their state, tbl(1) needs to be able to do so, and the writable line number register `ln` is not a reliable proxy for this information. o Type size escape sequences of the form "\sNN", where NN is in the range 10-39, are now recognized only in compatibility mode ("groff -C"); when encountered, an error diagnostic is emitted. Otherwise, "\sN" is interpreted as setting the type size to the single-digit value N (in scaled points), which ends the escape sequence. This change eliminates a quirk in the language grammar that dates back to the mid-1970s (AT&T troff by Ossanna) but was not documented in the Troff User's Manual until 1992 when Kernighan updated CSTR #54 for device-independent AT&T troff. The form "\s(NN" is accepted for two-digit sizes in all known troffs. The form "\s[NNN]" accepts a numeric expression of variable length; it has been supported by groff since version 1.01 (March 1991) or earlier, by Heirloom Doctools troff since its 2005-08-16 release, and by neatroff, but not by Plan 9 troff. The form "\s'NNN'" is also widely supported. Summary: in your documents, rewrite escape sequences beginning with "\s1", "\s2", or "\s3" in an unambiguous and portable form. For instance, "\s36" can become any of: \s(36 \s[36] \s'36' You can use grep '\\s[123]' to find instances in your documents. Those who have changed the escape character with the `ec` request (an advanced usage) are expected to be able to cope; ask the development team for support if you need it. o New requests `soquiet` and `msoquiet` are available. They operate as `so` and `mso`, respectively, except that they do not emit a warning diagnostic if the file named in their argument does not exist. o New requests `stringdown` and `stringup` are available. These change the string named in their argument by replacing each of its bytes with its lowercase or uppercase version (if any), respectively. groff special characters (see the groff_char(7) man page) in the string will often transform in the expected way due to the regular naming convention for accented letters. When they do not, use substrings and/or catenation. o The `ab` request no longer writes "User Abort." to the standard error stream if given no arguments. o The `fp` request no longer accepts file or font names with slashes in them as arguments. All font description files are expected to be accessible within the directory of the output device for which they were prepared. nroff ----- o The new option -P takes an argument to pass to the output driver (always grotty(1)). "-P-i" directs the terminal device to display real italic (oblique) characters instead of underlining: it is up to your terminal (emulator) to support italics (xterm does since patch #314 [2014-12-28]). "-P-h" can now be used instead of -h; the latter may eventually be deprecated and repurposed. o The new option -V emits the constructed groff command that nroff would run to standard output instead of executing it. Arguments to nroff that contain shell metacharacters may not be sufficiently escaped for the output of nroff -V to be copied and pasted to the shell prompt; this is a historical deficiency of the Bourne shell family not yet corrected by the POSIX standard. o nroff now recognizes the -b, -E, -k, -K, -R, and -z options and passes them through to groff. o nroff now supports spaces and tabs between option flag letters and option arguments, like groff and troff themselves. groff ----- o The -I option now implies -g (run the grn(1) preprocessor), and supplies grn an -M option with the argument to -I. eqn --- o The GNU extension delim on is now recognized even in AT&T compatibility mode (the -C option) in order to reliably integrate with tbl. Few eqn documents are expected to use 'o' and 'n' as left and right delimiters, respectively. If yours does, consider swapping them, or select others. o The command-line option -D is no longer supported. It has been undocumented, and issued a warning of its obsolescence upon use, for 30 years, since groff 1.06 (September 1992). pic --- o The token `.PY` is now recognized as a synonym of `.PF` to work around a name space collision with the m (mm) macro package, which uses the same name for a page footer management macro. (This problem dates back at least to Unix System V Release 2, 1983.) You should continue to use `.PF` to end pictures with flyback unless a similar problem faces your document. tbl --- o GNU tbl now suspends output line numbering while formatting tables, saving and restoring its status before and after each table region, including the count of lines for which numbering is suppressed. Historical tbl implementations did not, with bizarre consequences when text blocks were used in tables. Macro packages -------------- o mom version 2.5 is distributed with this release. New features include shaded backgrounds, frames, and colored pages. Thanks to Peter Schaffter. o English localization has been split into a dedicated macro file, `en.tmac`, for better parallelism with other localization files and to improve support for multilingual documents. Those who want a different default input language should edit the troffrc file to source the desired groff locale macro file (`cs.tmac`, `de.tmac`, `den.tmac`, `fr.tmac`, `it.tmac`, `ja.tmac`, `sv.tmac`, or `zh.tmac`) instead of `en.tmac`. The default hyphenation mode (as given to the `hy` request) for users of English has changed from "1", which was inappropriate for the TeX-based hyphenation patterns groff has used since at least 1991, to "4". However, invoking ".hy" without an argument remains synonymous with ".hy 1". o The hyphenation patterns for English have been updated using the `hyph-en-us.tex` patterns file from the TeX hyph-utf8 project. The new patterns likely _will_ change the automatic hyphenation break points of your English documents. o The `PDFPIC` macro (provided by the `pdfpic` package) no longer aborts upon encountering trouble. Instead, it reports an error and abandons processing of its argument(s). It is also more sensitive to other kinds of problems and handles them the same way, by issuing a diagnostic and returning. If you wish `PDFPIC` to abort document processing immediately upon error, you can append an `ab` request to the package's error-handling macro. .am pdfpic@error . ab .. o The pspic package now also has an error hook macro, which you can use to make failed image loads fatal (or attempt fallback or recovery). .am pspic@error-hook . ab .. o The new rfc1345 macro package, contributed by Dorai Sitaram, defines special character identifiers implementing RFC 1345 mnemonics (plus some additions from Vim, which itself uses RFC 1345 for its digraphs). It is documented in the groff_rfc1345(7) man page. o The new sboxes macro package, contributed by Deri James, offers a simple interface to the new gropdf(1) "background" feature. Using it, ms documents can draw colored rectangles beneath any groff output. See "Using PDF boxes with groff and the ms macros", installed as `msboxes.ms` and `msboxes.pdf` for instructions and a demonstration. o The an (man) and doc (mdoc) macro packages no longer remap the -, ', and ` input characters to Basic Latin code points on UTF-8 devices, but treat them as groff normally does (and AT&T troff before it did) for typesetting devices, where they become the hyphen, apostrophe or right single quotation mark, and left single quotation mark, respectively. This change is expected to expose glyph usage errors in man pages. See the "PROBLEMS" file for a recipe that will conceal these errors. A better long-term approach is for man pages to adopt correct input practices; the man pages groff_man_style(7), groff_char(7), and man-pages(7) (subsection "Generating optimal glyphs"; from the Linux man-pages project) contain such instructions. Doing so also improves man page typography when formatting for PDF. If you maintain a generator of man(7) or mdoc(7) documents (such as a tool that converts other formats to them), and need assistance, please contact the groff@xxxxxxx mailing list and describe your situation. o The an (man) macro package can now produce clickable hyperlinks within terminal emulators, using the OSC 8 support added to grotty(1) (see below). The groff man(7) extension macros `UR` and `MT`, present since 2007, expose this feature. At present the feature is disabled by default in `man.local` pending more widespread recognition of OSC 8 sequences in pager programs. The package now recognizes a `U` register to enable hyperlinks in any output driver supporting them. Use a command like printf '\033]8;;man:grotty(1)\033\\grotty(1)\033]8;;\033\\\n' | more to check your terminal and pager for OSC 8 support. If you see "grotty(1)" and no additional garbage characters, then you may wish to edit "man.local" to remove the lines that disable this feature. o The an (man) macro package supports a new macro, `MR`, intended for use by man page cross references in preference to the font style alternation macros historically used. Where before you would write .BR ls (1). or .IR ls (1). you should now write .MR ls 1 . (the third argument, typically used for trailing punctuation, is optional). Because the macro semantically identifies a man page, it can create a clickable hyperlink ("man:ls(1)" for the above example) on supporting devices. Furthermore, a new string, `MF`, defines the font to be used for setting the man page topic (the first argument to `MR` and `TH`), permitting configuration by distributions, sites, and users. Inclusion of the `MR` macro was prompted by its introduction to Plan 9 from User Space's troff in August 2020. Its purpose is to ameliorate several long-standing problems with man page cross references: (1) the package's lack of inherent hyperlink support for them; (2) false-positive identification of strings resembling man page cross references (as can happen with "exit(1)", "while(1)", "sleep(5)", "time(0)" and others) by terminal emulators and other programs; (3) the unwanted intrusion of hyphens into man page topics, which frustrates copy-and-paste operations (this problem has always been avoidable through use of the \% escape sequence, but cross references are frequent in man pages and some page authors are inexpert *roff users); and (4) deep divisions in man page maintenance communities over which typeface should be used to set the man page topic (italics, roman, or bold). o Part of the an (man) macro package has been renamed from "an-old.tmac" to "an.tmac", replacing a file that sourced the "andoc.tmac" wrapper. This means that the "-man" argument to groff (or nroff, or troff) will no longer load the andoc wrapper, and not successfully format mdoc(7) man pages. If you are not sure which macro package a given man page uses, or you wish to batch-process a series of man pages written variously in the man and mdoc formats, be sure to call the formatter with the "-mandoc" option explicitly, as "-man" will no longer do this. The man-db man(1) implementation has, since 2001, used "-mandoc" preferentially if available when man-db is configured. o The an (man) and doc (mdoc) macro packages support a new `AD` string to put the default adjustment mode under user control at rendering time. The default is "b" (adjust lines to both margins) as has been the Unix man(7) default since 1979. o The an (man) and doc (mdoc) macro packages support new `CS` and `CT` registers to control rendering of man page section headings and topics (seen in the page header), respectively, in full capitals. These default off (with no visible effect on pages that already fully capitalize such text in man page sources). The rationale is to encourage man page authors to preserve case distinction information in (or restore it to) their topics and section headings, while giving users (including system administrators, distributors, integrators, and maintainers of man(1) implementations) a way to view the rendered page elements in full capitals if desired. o The an (man) macro package no longer honors an `ll` request to set the line length on nroff devices prior to processing a man page. This was deprecated in groff 1.18 (July 2002), and all known man program and macro package implementations either have set an LL register since 2002 (man-db man), 2005 (Brouwer/Lucifredi man), or don't let the user vary the line length freely (DWB troff, Solaris troff, Plan 9 troff) or at all (mandoc, Heirloom Doctools troff). o The an (man) macro package now interprets the value of the `HY` register as a Boolean; using it to set a specific hyphenation mode is no longer supported. The groff command-line option `-rHY=0` continues to disable automatic hyphenation of man page text as before. o The an (man) macro package's `TS` macro no longer inserts vertical space. It was not documented to do so, but had since groff 1.18 (July 2002). Man page authors may freely use paragraphing macros around tables if vertical space is desired. o The an (man) macro package no longer attempts to detect misuse of the `R` string as a macro. The `R` string itself is a legacy feature, not required in modern man pages; see groff_man_style(7). o The groff_man(7) man page documenting the groff implementation of the an (man) macro package has been split into two pages. The original page remains as a terser reference for experienced users. A new page, groff_man_style(7), is a tutorial and style guide containing the same material supplemented with explanations, examples, and advice for the reader who is not an expert in *roff systems or in writing man pages. o The doc (mdoc) macro package now honors the `C`, `FT`, `HY`, `IN`, `P`, `SN`, and `X` registers and `HF` string as the an (man) package does. o The doc (mdoc) macro package now renders man page (sub)section cross references cited with the `Sx` macro by quoting them instead of setting them in italics. o The e (me) macro package has changed its default line length on typesetting devices from 6i to the output device's default (for example, 6.5i on the 'ps' and 'pdf' devices). You can use "papersize.tmac" to override this length, as in "groff -d paper=a4l", without needing to alter the document. o The e (me) macro package has changed its support for output line numbering with the `n1` and `n2` macros to resolve several bugs in the previous implementation. The `n1` macro now accepts an optional `C` argument to set the line number at the existing page offset instead of reducing the page offset to make the line number appear in the left margin. A second argument to the `n2` macro is no longer supported. A new register `no` makes configurable the amount of horizontal space to be used for the line number (the default is unchanged). o The e (me) macro package now uses strings `wa` and `wc` to store the terms the package produces in chapter headings created by the `$c` macro. The strings, which default to "Appendix" and "Chapter", respectively, ease localization of the package and replacement of the terms used without requiring the `$c` macro to be redefined. o The e (me) macro package has a new macro, `ld`, which "re-localizes the date"; if you modify troff registers `dw`, `mo`, and `yr` (to record a document's date of revision, for instance), call `ld` afterward to update the package's `y2` and `y4` registers and the localized strings `dw` and `mo` for the names of the weekday and month. `ld` is also used internally to simplify the use of the package with languages other than English; it thus updates the `wa` and `wc` strings as well. If you want to customize these strings, do so after any `ld` call you make. o The e (me) macro package now has a register `sx` that eases the configuration of space added to the line height above/below when super/subscripting is used. It defaults to 0.2m, the value used literally in past definitions of the super/subscripting strings. groff's own 'me' documents redefine it to zero. o The e (me) macro package's `$v` and `$V` registers have been renamed to `tv` and `dv`--they control the vertical spacing used for text and displays/annotations, respectively. The old names are still supported as aliases. The new names reflect the fact that users are expected to set them if desired, unlike other registers and strings beginning with "$". o The e (me) and s (ms) macro packages now offer a `PF` macro, supporting the pic(1) preprocessor's "flyback" feature. Thanks to Dave Kemper. o The m (mm) and s (ms) macro packages no longer implement the `IX` macro. This undocumented 4.2BSD ms extension was similarly undocumented by groff mm and ms. No documents applying it are attested. groff mm documents its own indexing feature, `INITI`. We otherwise suggest makeindex(1), which supports troff and is available with most TeX distributions, for your mm/ms document indexing needs. o The m (mm) macro package now adapts to the paper format selected when the macro file "papersize.tmac" is used (by specifying the groff "-d paper" command-line option). A consequence is that "groff -mm" and "groff -d paper=letter -mm" are _not_ synonymous (when groff is configured to use U.S. letter as the default paper format), because groff mm(7) uses a page offset of 0.963 inches on typesetting devices for compatibility with DWB mm. If the `W` or `O` registers are also set on the command line, the line length and page offset, respectively, are not overridden by "papersize.tmac". o The m (mm) macro package now recognizes a `V` register to set the vertical spacing for the document. Like the existing `S`, it must be set from the command line. Further, both registers are interpreted correctly if suffixed with a scaling unit, instead of requiring an unscaled value assumed to be points. o The m (mm) macro package now supports AT&T/DWB mm's `Sm` string. o The m (mm) macro package now requires a title to be declared when memorandum type 5 is used (".MT 5"), just as type 4 has since groff 1.10 (November 1995). o The m (mm) and s (ms) macro packages no longer manipulate the set of enabled warning categories. If you want all warnings on, use the `warn` request with no arguments in your document or pass "-w w" to groff (see troff(1) or the groff Texinfo manual for more on warnings). o The m (mm) and s (ms) macro packages' `R` macros now work analogously to their `B` and `I` macros instead of ignoring their arguments. o The m (mm) package now offers a `PY` macro, which serves the function of `PF` (end pic(1) picture with flyback) from other macro packages. o The "ptx.tmac" macro file, a counterpart to the GNU coreutils ptx(1) command for generating permuted indexes, is now installed. It has long been part of the source distribution. o The s (ms) macro package supports a new string, `FR`, which defines the ratio of the footnote line length to the current line length. The default expression is "11/12", eleven twelfths of the normal line length, adopted for better compatibility with ms documents prepared with AT&T ms or its descendant implementations in Heirloom Doctools and neatroff. This is a change from previous groff releases, which used a ratio of five sixths. You may wish to set the `FR` string to "1" to align with contemporary typesetting practices. In Unix Version 7 ms, its descendants, and groff prior to this release, an `FL` register was used for the line length in footnotes; however, setting this register at document initialization time had no effect on the footnote line length in multi-column arrangements. `FR` should be used in preference to the old `FL` register in contemporary documents; see the groff Texinfo manual or the "Using groff with the ms macros" document, also part of this release. Thanks to T. Kurt Bond. o The s (ms) macro package has added strings, `<` and `>`, to perform subscripting. They work analogously to the `{` and `}` superscripting strings that have been present in groff ms since 1991 or earlier. o The s (ms) macro package has added a hook macro, `FS-MARK`, which is called automatically by the `FS` macro (with the same arguments given to `FS`) before any other footnote processing. It is empty by default but can be defined by the user to, for example, place a hyperlink anchor so that a link within a footnote can return to its referential context. "Portable Document Format Publishing with GNU Troff", distributed with groff as `pdfmark.ms`, uses this technique. Thanks to Keith Marshall. o The s (ms) macro package's `RP` macro recognizes a new optional argument, `no-renumber`, which suppresses the renumbering of the page after the cover page as page 1. It furthermore recognizes the optional argument `no-repeat-info`, which has the same effect as `no`; the latter will continue to be supported for backward compatibility. Optional arguments to `RP` can be given in any order. o The s (ms) macro package supports new macros `XN` and `XH` to ease the input of numbered and unnumbered section headings, respectively. They internally call the `XS` and `XE` macros to produce table of contents entries, and lay a foundation for inclusion of PDF bookmarks, all without requiring retyping of the heading text as the package previously encouraged. Thanks to Keith Marshall. o The s (ms) macro package now uses a default line length of 6.5 inches by default, resulting in 1-inch left and right margins. When the "papersize.tmac" package is used by employing the "-d paper" groff(1) option on typesetting devices, the default page offset and line length are adjusted to maintain these margins. o The "a4.tmac" file has been dropped from the distribution. Its successor, "papersize.tmac", has been present and documented for nearly 20 years. See subsection "Paper format" of groff(1). o The "safer.tmac" file has been dropped from the distribution. It was present only to support man(1) programs that unconditionally passed the formatter the "-msafer" option, and had contained only comments for over 20 years. If your man(1) program has this requirement, you can create an empty file of this name in groff's macro file search path (see troff(1)) or consider migrating to man-db man(1). Output drivers -------------- o On output devices using the Latin-1 character encoding ("groff -T latin1" and the X11 devices) the special character escape sequence \[oq] (opening quote) is now rendered as code point 0x27 (apostrophe) instead of 0x60 (grave accent). The ISO 8859/ECMA-94 Latin character sets do not define any glyphs for directional ("typographer's") quotation marks, but the apostrophe is depicted in the defining standard as a neutral (vertical) glyph, whereas the grave accent 0x60 and acute accent 0xB4 are mirror-symmetric diacritical marks. This change has no effect on _input_ conventions for roff source documents. You can still get directional single quotes on UTF-8, PostScript, PDF, and other output devices supporting them by typing sequences like `this' in the input (character remapping with 'char' requests and similar notwithstanding). gropdf ------ o A new device control command, "background", enables boxes to be drawn underneath other page content. The boxes can be shaded with colors, drawn with a colored border of configurable thickness, and interrupted by page breaks with special support for breaking before footnotes and similar material. For convenience, "pdf.tmac" exposes a new macro, `pdfbackground`. Thanks to Deri James. grotty ------ o The "utf8" output device now maps the input characters '^' (caret, circumflex accent, or "hat") and '~' (tilde) to U+02C6 (modifier letter circumflex accent) and U+02DC (small tilde), respectively, for consistency with groff's other output devices. This change is expected to expose glyph usage errors in man pages. See the "PROBLEMS" file for a recipe that will conceal these errors. A better long-term approach is for man pages to adopt correct input practices; the man pages groff_man_style(7), groff_char(7), and man-pages(7) (subsection "Generating optimal glyphs"; from the Linux man-pages project) contain such instructions. Doing so also improves man page typography when formatting for PDF. If you maintain a generator of man(7) or mdoc(7) documents (such as a tool that converts other formats to them), and need assistance, please contact the groff@xxxxxxx mailing list and describe your situation. o A new device control command, "link", generates OSC 8 hyperlinks. This means that groff documents can produce clickable links in the terminal window for emulators that support such escape sequences. o The "sgr" device control command, which dynamically configured support for ISO 6429/ECMA-48 SGR escape sequences (and restored traditional overstriking behavior if disabled), has been removed. It took effect only at page boundaries. grotty's "-c" command-line option and the GROFF_NO_SGR environment variable remain supported. Documentation ------------- o groff's Texinfo manual is included in the distribution archive in several formats, including GNU Info, HTML, TeX DVI, PDF, and plain text. Many sections have been extensively revised and corrected, and much material added to help the learner acquire the groff formatting language (see, for instance, the section/node "Text"). o A compilation of all of groff's man pages in PDF and UTF-8-encoded text (with SGR escape sequences) is produced by the build. Many of the documents in this 380+-page document have been heavily revised or rewritten, including tbl(1), groff(1), groff_font(5), groff(7), groff_char(7), and roff(7). The PDF version uses pdfmark extensions to produce an internal bookmark for every man page document, section heading, and subsection heading. o Larry Kollar's "Using groff with the ms Macro Package" has been resurrected after 20+ years, revised, and updated. o Eric Allman's "me Reference Manual" has been revised in detail. Miscellaneous ------------- o Because all generated forms of groff's Texinfo manual are now included in the distribution archive, building from that archive no longer depends on GNU Texinfo or a TeX installation (the latter was required only for the "doc" target, which had to be explicitly named). o Building groff from its distribution archive no longer requires byacc (or GNU Bison) to be installed. o m4 is now required to build. Any m4 that implements the features documented in the Version 7 Unix m4(1) man page, and the `-D` option, should suffice. o New 'configure' options '--{en,dis}able-groff-allocator' control whether groff uses its own malloc/free-wrapping allocator to implement all C++ new/delete operations. groff has used this allocator for over 30 years; C++ implementations are more mature now. The default is now to rely on C++ language runtime support for new/delete. When building groff, use configure --enable-groff-allocator to re-enable groff's traditional allocator. o The 'configure' option '--with-appresdir' has been renamed to '--with-appdefdir'. o Italian language input documents are now supported, including hyphenation patterns from the hyph-utf8 project and localized strings for the ms, me, mm, and mom packages. Thanks to Edmond Orignac. o Manual section titles for man pages (those that appear by default in the page header, like "General Commands Manual") are now localized for Czech, German, French, Italian, and Swedish. o The semantics of the environment variable SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH to groff, support for which was added in 1.22.4, were not established at that time with respect to time zone selection, prompting divergent interpretations; Debian and distributions derived from it have for several years patched groff to implicitly use UTC as the time zone when interpreting the current time (or SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH) as a local time. While a convenient and defensible choice for reproducible build efforts, it runs against the grain of user expectations. Systems programmers like time zone-invariant, monotonically increasing clocks; the broader user base usually prefers a clock that follows an applicable civil calendar. groff programs now reckon SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH with respect to the local time zone. Users of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH may wish to also set the TZ environment variable. o xtotroff now supports a "-d" option to specify the directory in which to generate font description files. o The 'configure' option '--with-doc' that was introduced in version 1.22.3 has been deleted again. Its basic idea was misguided because each of the documents is only available in a subset of the output formats, so in contrast to the documentation, the option not only affected which output formats were generated, but also restricted the documentation content the user would get in erratic and surprising ways. The option was also ill-designed insofar as the "examples" keyword did not represent an output format. Some example files were controlled by the "examples" keyword alone, some by the respective format keywords alone, and some by a combination of both. The implementation of the option was full of bugs, but few, if any, of these bugs were ever reported by users, giving the impression that few, if any, users ever attempted to use the option, and those who did likely remained unaware that doing so deprived them of parts of the content of the documentation. Experience has demonstrated that properly maintaining and testing the option exceeds the amount of effort the GNU troff team is able to invest. Finally, GNU standards contain no recommendation to support this option, and indeed, few, if any, GNU packages apart from groff support it. o The 'doc' Make target has been eliminated. 'all' (the default Make target) assumes responsibility for generating the groff Texinfo manual in all formats supported by the build host. This change is only significant when building from a Git checkout or if our Texinfo manual's sources are modified; the distribution archive now provides copies of the manual in Info, plain text, HTML, DVI, and PDF. o afmtodit no longer writes file names with directory information in them to the "name" directives of the font descriptions it generates. (The `fp` request no longer accepts such names; see "troff" above.) o afmtodit now exits with status 2 (not 1) upon usage errors. o afmtodit now recognizes a '-w' option to specify the generated font description's "spacewidth" parameter (see groff_font(5)). The internal library "libgroff" now emits a diagnostic if a font description file is missing such a directive. Adding this option enables a well-formed font description to be produced by the tool (without requiring editing by hand). o pfbtops now exits with status 2 upon usage errors and the standard C library's `EXIT_FAILURE` status (usually 1) on operational failures instead of vice versa. o groffer has been deleted from the distribution. o grog no longer supports the "--warnings" option; the one diagnostic message that it enabled has been removed. o The ditroff(7) man page has been deleted. The "History" section of roff(7) covers the same subject in greater depth. o The groff_filenames(5) man page has been deleted. It had inaccuracies and spurious content. The "File name conventions" section of roff(7) covers the same subject. o The lj4_font(5) man page has been deleted. Its content has moved into the "Fonts" subsection of grolj4(1). Acknowledgements ================ We'd like to thank the following people for helping ensure the quality of this release. "hackerb9" Alan D. Salewski Alex Colomar Alexander Kanavin Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri Axel Kielhorn Ben Wong Bertrand Garrigues Bjarni Ingi Gislason Blake McBride Bruno Haible Colin Watson Dave Kemper Deri James Dorai Sitaram Doug McIlroy Florent Rougon Gene Hans Bezemer Ingo Schwarze Jeff Conrad Jeremy Puhlman John Gardner KUBO Koichi Keith Marshall Ken Mandelberg Nikita Ivanov Oliver Corff Olle Lögdahl Osamu Sayama Peter Schaffter Petru-Florin Mihancea Quentin Monnet Raf Czlonka Rafal Pietrak Ralph Corderoy Robert Bihlmeyer Robert Goulding Russ Allbery Sergei Trofimovich Steffen Nurpmeso T. Kurt Bond Tadziu Hoffman Thomas Dupond Werner Lemberg Wim Stockman наб
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