groff_man - groff `an' macros to support generation of man
pages
groff -man [ options... ] [ files... ]
The tmac.an macros used to generate man pages with groff
were written by James Clark. This document provides a
brief summary of the use of each macro in that package.
.TP title section [extra1] [extra2] [extra3]
Sets the title of the man page to title and the
section to section, which must take on a value
between 1 and 8. The value section may also have a
string appended, e.g. `.pm', to indicate a specific
subsection of the man pages.
.SH text for a heading
Sets up an unindented and unnumbered section heading.
Prints out all the text following `.SH' up to
the end of the line in bold face, with a size
slightly smaller than that for indented section
headings.
.SS text for a heading
Sets up an indented section heading. Prints out
all the text following `.SS' up to the end of the
line in bold face, with a size slightly larger than
that for unindented section headings.
.TP [nnn]
Sets up an indented paragraph. The indentation is
set to nnn if that argument is supplied. The first
line of text following this macro is interpreted as
a string to be printed flush-left, as it is appropriate
for a label. It is not interpreted as part
of a paragraph, so there is no attempt to fill the
first line with text from the following input
lines. Nevertheless, if the label is not as wide
as the indentation, then the paragraph starts at
the same line (but indented), continuing on the
following lines. If the label is wider than the
indentation, then the descriptive part of the paragraph
begins on the line following the label,
entirely indented. The `.TP' macro is the macro
used for the explanations you are just reading.
.LP or .PP or .P
These macros are mutual aliases. Any of them
causes a line break at the current position, followed
by a vertical space downwards by the amount
that is set in the `PD' counter.
.IP [designator] [nnn]
Sets up an indented paragraph, using designator as
a tag to mark its beginning. The indentation is
permanently set to nnn if that argument is supplied.
To set the indentation back to the previous
level, one must call some other macro that uses
indented paragraphs, and explicitly provide it with
the value of the previous indentation.
For example, the following paragraphs were all set
up with bullets as the designator, using `.IP o
4':
o `IP' is one of the three macros used in tmac.an to
format lists.
o `HP' is another. This macro produces a paragraph with
a left hanging indentation.
o `TP' is another. This macro produces an unindented
label (given by the text on the first line following
`TP'), followed by an indented paragraph with appropriately
descriptive text.
.HP [nnn]
Sets up paragraphs with hanging left indentation. The
indentation is set to nnn if that argument is supplied.
The following pargraph illustrates the effect
of this macro with the hanging indentation set to 2:
This is a pagraph following an invocation of the `.HP'
macro. As you can see, it produces a paragraph where
all lines but the first are flushed right and are
shorter than the preceding lines.
.SM Causes the text on the same line or the text on the
next line to appear in a font that is one point
size smaller than the default font.
.SB Causes the text on the same line or the text on the
next line to appear in small boldface font.
.BI text
Causes text on the same line to appear alternately
in bold face and italic. The text must be on the
same line as the macro call. Thus `.BI this word
and that' would cause `this' and `and' to appear in
bold face, while `word' and `that' appear in italics.
.IB text
Causes text to appear alternately in italic and
bold face. The text must be on the same line as
the macro call.
.BR text
Causes text on the same line to appear alternately
in bold face and roman. The text must be on the
same line as the macro call.
.RB text
Causes text on the same line to appear alternately
in roman and bold face. The text must be on the
same line as the macro call.
.R text
Causes text to appear in roman font. If no text is
present on the line where the macro is called, then
the text of the next line appears in roman. This
is the default font to which text is returned at
the end of processing of the other macros.
.B text
Causes text to appear in bold face. If no text is
present on the line where the macro is called, then
the text of the next line appears in bold face.
.I text
Causes text to appear in italic. If no text is
present on the line where the macro is called, then
the text of the next line appears in italic.
Since the tmac.an macros consist of groups of groff
requests, one can, in principle, supplement the functionality
of the tmac.an macros with individual groff requests
where necessary. A complete list of these requests is
available on the WWW at
http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/groff/groff_toc.html
This manual page was originally written for the Debian
GNU/Linux system by Susan G. Kleinmann <[email protected]>,
corrected by Werner Lemberg <[email protected]>, and is now part
of the GNU troff distribution.
Groff Version 1.15 9 April 2000 3 [ Back ] |
