PDFROFF(1)                 OpenBSD Reference Manual                 PDFROFF(1)



NAME
       pdfroff - create PDF documents using groff

SYNOPSIS
       pdfroff [-abcegilpstzCEGNRSUVXZ] [-d cs] [-f fam] [-F dir] [-I dir]
               [-L arg] [-m name] [-M dir] [-n num] [-o list] [-P arg] [-r cn]
               [-T dev] [-w name] [-W name] [--emit-ps] [--no-toc-relocation]
               [--no-kill-null-pages] [--stylesheet=name] [--no-pdf-output]
               [--pdf-output=name] [--no-reference-dictionary]
               [--reference-dictionary=name] [--report-progress]
               [--keep-temporary-files] file ...
       pdfroff -h | --help
       pdfroff -v | --version [option ...]

DESCRIPTION
       pdfroff is a wrapper program for the GNU text processing system, groff.
       It transparently handles the mechanics of multiple pass groff
       processing, when applied to suitably marked up groff source files, such
       that tables of contents and body text are formatted separately, and are
       subsequently combined in the correct order, for final publication as a
       single PDF document.  A further optional "style sheet" capability is
       provided; this allows for the definition of content which is required
       to precede the table of contents, in the published document.

       For each invocation of pdfroff, the ultimate groff output stream is
       post-processed by the GhostScript interpreter, to produce a finished
       PDF document.

       pdfroff makes no assumptions about, and imposes no restrictions on, the
       use of any groff macro packages which the user may choose to employ, in
       order to achieve a desired document format; however, it does include
       specific built in support for the pdfmark macro package, should the
       user choose to employ it.  Specifically, if the pdfhref macro, defined
       in the pdfmark.tmac package, is used to define public reference marks,
       or dynamic links to such reference marks, then pdfroff performs as many
       preformatting groff passes as required, up to a maximum limit of four,
       in order to compile a document reference dictionary, to resolve
       references, and to expand the dynamically defined content of links.

USAGE
       The command line is parsed in accordance with normal GNU conventions,
       but with one exception -- when specifying any short form option (i.e.,
       a single character option introduced by a single hyphen), and if that
       option expects an argument, then it must be specified independently
       (i.e., it may not be appended to any group of other single character
       short form options).

       Long form option names (i.e., those introduced by a double hyphen) may
       be abbreviated to their minimum length unambiguous initial substring.

       Otherwise, pdfroff usage closely mirrors that of groff itself.  Indeed,
       with the exception of the -h, -v, and -T dev short form options, and
       all long form options, which are parsed internally by pdfroff, all
       options and file name arguments specified on the command line are
       passed on to groff, to control the formatting of the PDF document.
       Consequently, pdfroff accepts all options and arguments, as specified
       in groff(1), which may also be considered as the definitive reference
       for all standard pdfroff options and argument usage.

OPTIONS
       pdfroff accepts all of the short form options (i.e., those introduced
       by a single hyphen), which are available with groff itself.  In most
       cases, these are simply passed transparently to groff; the following,
       however, are handled specially by pdfroff.

       -h     Same as --help; see below.

       -i     Process standard input, after all other specified input files.
              This is passed transparently to groff, but, if grouped with
              other options, it must be the first in the group.  Hiding it
              within a group breaks standard input processing, in the multiple
              pass groff processing context of pdfroff.

       -T dev Only -T ps is supported by pdfroff.  Attempting to specify any
              other device causes pdfroff to abort.

       -v     Same as --version; see below.

       See groff(1) for a description of all other short form options, which
       are transparently passed through pdfroff to groff.

       All long form options (i.e., those introduced by a double hyphen) are
       interpreted locally by pdfroff; they are not passed on to groff, unless
       otherwise stated below.

       --help Causes pdfroff to display a summary of the its usage syntax, and
              supported options, and then exit.

       --emit-ps
              Suppresses the final output conversion step, causing pdfroff to
              emit PostScript output instead of PDF.  This may be useful, to
              capture intermediate PostScript output, when using a specialised
              postprocessor, such as gpresent for example, in place of the
              default GhostScript PDF writer.

       --keep-temporary-files
              Suppresses the deletion of temporary files, which normally
              occurs after pdfroff has completed PDF document formatting; this
              may be useful, when debugging formatting problems.

              See section FILES, for a description of the temporary files used
              by pdfroff.

       --no-pdf-output
              May be used with the --reference-dictionary=name option
              (described below) to eliminate the overhead of PDF formatting,
              when running pdfroff to create a reference dictionary, for use
              in a different document.

       --no-reference-dictionary
              May be used to eliminate the overhead of creating a reference
              dictionary, when it is known that the target PDF document
              contains no public references, created by the pdfhref macro.

       --no-toc-relocation
              May be used to eliminate the extra groff processing pass, which
              is required to generate a table of contents, and relocate it to
              the start of the PDF document, when processing any document
              which lacks an automatically generated table of contents.

       --no-kill-null-pages
              While preparing for simulation of the manual collation step,
              which is traditionally required to relocate of a table of
              contents to the start of a document, pdfroff accumulates a
              number of empty page descriptions into the intermediate
              PostScript output stream.  During the final collation step,
              these empty pages are normally discarded from the finished
              document; this option forces pdfroff to leave them in place.

       --pdf-output=name
              Specifies the name to be used for the resultant PDF document; if
              unspecified, the PDF output is written to standard output.  A
              future version of pdfroff may use this option, to encode the
              document name in a generated reference dictionary.

       --reference-dictionary=name
              Specifies the name to be used for the generated reference
              dictionary file; if unspecified, the reference dictionary is
              created in a temporary file, which is deleted when pdfroff
              completes processing of the current document.  This option must
              be specified, if it is desired to save the reference dictionary,
              for use in references placed in other PDF documents.

       --report-progress
              Causes pdfroff to display an informational message on standard
              error, at the start of each groff processing pass.

       --stylesheet=name
              Specifies the name of an input file, to be used as a style sheet
              for formatting of content, which is to be placed before the
              table of contents, in the formatted PDF document.

       --version
              Causes pdfroff to display a version identification message.  The
              entire command line is then passed transparently to groff, in a
              one pass operation only, in order to display the associated
              groff version information, before exiting.

ENVIRONMENT
       The following environment variables may be set, and exported, to modify
       the behaviour of pdfroff.

       PDFROFF_COLLATE
              Specifies the program to be used for collation of the finshed
              PDF document.

              This collation step may be required to move tables of contents
              to the start of the finished PDF document, when formatting with
              traditional macro packages, which print them at the end.
              However, users should not normally need to specify
              PDFROFF_COLLATE, (and indeed, are not encouraged to do so).  If
              unspecified, pdfroff uses sed(1) by default, which normally
              suffices.

              If PDFROFF_COLLATE is specified, then it must act as a filter,
              accepting a list of file name arguments, and write its output to
              the stdout stream, whence it is piped to the
              PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND, to produce the finished PDF
              output.

              When specifying PDFROFF_COLLATE, it is normally necessary to
              also specify PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES.

              PDFROFF_COLLATE is ignored, if pdfroff is invoked with the
              --no-kill-null-pages option.

       PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES
              Specifies options to be passed to the PDFROFF_COLLATE program.

              It should not normally be necessary to specify
              PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES.  The internal default is a sed(1)
              script, which is intended to remove completely blank pages from
              the collated output stream, and which should be appropriate in
              most applications of pdfroff.  However, if any alternative to
              sed(1) is specified for PDFROFF_COLLATE, then it is likely that
              a corresponding alternative specification for
              PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES is required.

              As in the case of PDFROFF_COLLATE, PDFROFF_KILL_NULL_PAGES is
              ignored, if pdfroff is invoked with the --no-kill-null-pages
              option.

       PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND
              Specifies the command to be used for the final document
              conversion from PostScript intermediate output to PDF.  It must
              behave as a filter, writing its output to the stdout stream, and
              must accept an arbitrary number of files ... arguments, with the
              special case of - representing the stdin stream.

              If unspecified, PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND defaults to

                gs -dBATCH -dQUIET -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
                -sOutputFile=-

       GROFF_TMPDIR
              Identifies the directory in which pdfroff should create
              temporary files.  If GROFF_TMPDIR is not specified, then the
              variables TMPDIR, TMP and TEMP are considered in turn, as
              possible temporary file repositories.  If none of these are set,
              then temporary files are created in the current directory.

       GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER
              Specifies the program to be invoked, when pdfroff converts groff
              PostScript output to PDF.  If PDFROFF_POSTPROCESSOR_COMMAND is
              specified, then the command name it specifies is implicitly
              assigned to GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER, overriding any
              explicit setting specified in the environment.  If
              GROFF_GHOSTSCRIPT_INTERPRETER is not specified, then pdfroff
              searches the process PATH, looking for a program with any of the
              well known names for the GhostScript interpreter; if no
              GhostScript interpreter can be found, pdfroff aborts.

       GROFF_AWK_INTERPRETER
              Specifies the program to be invoked, when pdfroff is extracting
              reference dictionary entries from a groff intermediate message
              stream.  If GROFF_AWK_INTERPRETER is not specified, then pdfroff
              searches the process PATH, looking for any of the preferred
              programs, `gawk', `mawk', `nawk' and `awk', in this order; if
              none of these are found, pdfroff issues a warning message, and
              continue processing; however, in this case, no reference
              dictionary is created.

       OSTYPE Typically defined automatically by the operating system, OSTYPE
              is used on Microsoft Win32/MS-DOS platforms only, to infer the
              default PATH_SEPARATOR character, which is used when parsing the
              process PATH to search for external helper programs.

       PATH_SEPARATOR
              If set, PATH_SEPARATOR overrides the default separator
              character, (`:' on POSIX/UNIX systems, inferred from OSTYPE on
              Microsoft Win32/MS-DOS), which is used when parsing the process
              PATH to search for external helper programs.

       SHOW_PROGRESS
              If this is set to a non-empty value, then pdfroff always behaves
              as if the --report-progress option is specified, on the command
              line.

FILES
       Input and output files for pdfroff may be named according to any
       convention of the user's choice.  Typically, input files may be named
       according to the choice of the principal formatting macro package,
       e.g., file.ms might be an input file for formatting using the ms macros
       (s.tmac); normally, the final output file should be named file.pdf.

       Temporary files, created by pdfroff, are placed in the file system
       hierarchy, in or below the directory specified by environment variables
       (see section ENVIRONMENT).  If mktemp(1) is available, it is invoked to
       create a private subdirectory of the nominated temporary files
       directory, (with subdirectory name derived from the template pdfroff-
       XXXXXXXXXX); if this subdirectory is successfully created, the
       temporary files will be placed within it, otherwise they will be placed
       directly in the directory nominated in the environment.

       All temporary files themselves are named according to the convention
       pdf$$.*, where $$ is the standard shell variable representing the
       process ID of the pdfroff process itself, and * represents any of the
       extensions used by pdfroff to identify the following temporary and
       intermediate files.

       pdf$$.tmp
              A scratch pad file, used to capture reference data emitted by
              groff, during the reference dictionary compilation phase.

       pdf$$.ref
              The reference dictionary, as compiled in the last but one pass
              of the reference dictionary compilation phase; (at the start of
              the first pass, this file is created empty; in successive
              passes, it contains the reference dictionary entries, as
              collected in the preceding pass).

              If the --reference-dictionary=name option is specified, this
              intermediate file becomes permanent, and is named name, rather
              than pdf$$.ref.

       pdf$$.cmp
              Used to collect reference dictionary entries during the active
              pass of the reference dictionary compilation phase.  At the end
              of any pass, when the content of pdf$$.cmp compares as identical
              to pdf$$.ref, (or the corresponding file named by the
              --reference-dictionary=name option), then reference dictionary
              compilation is terminated, and the document reference map is
              appended to this intermediate file, for inclusion in the final
              formatting passes.

       pdf$$.tc
              An intermediate PostScript file, in which "Table of Contents"
              entries are collected, to facilitate relocation before the body
              text, on ultimate output to the GhostScript postprocessor.

       pdf$$.ps
              An intermediate PostScript file, in which the body text is
              collected prior to ultimate output to the GhostScript
              postprocessor, in the proper sequence, after pdf$$.tc.

SEE ALSO
       See groff(1) for the definitive reference to document formatting with
       groff.  Since pdfroff provides a superset of all groff capabilities,
       groff(1) may also be considered to be the definitive reference to all
       standard capabilities of pdfroff, with this document providing the
       reference to pdfroff's extended features.

       While pdfroff imposes neither any restriction on, nor any requirement
       for, the use of any specific groff macro package, a number of supplied
       macro packages, and in particular those associated with the package
       pdfmark.tmac, are best suited for use with pdfroff as the preferred
       formatter.  Detailed documentation on the use of these packages may be
       found, in PDF format, in the reference guide "Portable Document Format
       Publishing with GNU Troff", included in the installed documentation set
       as /usr/local/share/doc/groff/pdf/pdfmark.pdf.

AUTHOR
       Copyright (C) 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

       This man page is distributed under the terms of the GNU Free
       Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3 or later, and is part of the
       GNU troff software package.  It was originally written by Keith
       Marshall <keith.d.marshall@ntlworld.com>, who also wrote the
       implementation of the pdfroff program, to which it relates.

       You should have received a copy of the FDL as part of the GNU troff
       distribution; it is also available on-line, at the GNU copyleft site
       <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html>.



Groff Version 1.21             31 December 2010                     PDFROFF(1)
