GNU groff 1.09 Release Notes

Note:
Some of the links in this file point to online documents which require additional installation.

Table of Contents

What is GNU groff ?

A suite of documentation tools that replace the standard Unix suite of :

nroff troff psroff eqn indxbib lookbib neqn pic refer soelim tbl

Currently there is no replacement for grap. We have included a perl script that has some of the same functionality, see pgraph man page. We have also included the gxditview previewer as well as a new shell script, xroff, that works just like groff, but invokes the previewer instead of the print spooler. For those users who wish to get as close as possible to a WYSIWYG system, edit your document in one window, xroff it in another window, and as you make changes, write out the changes, hit "r" in the previewer, and watch the document get updated in place.

The main advantage of using the GNU version of these standard UNIX utilities is that they are available universally, on virtually any UNIX platform so your documents will become more portable. Also, most of these programs have significant advantages over their traditional Unix counterparts, such as greater speed, additional options, and fewer arbitrary limits

See the man page for each specific utility for further details.

GNU packages are distributed under the FSF (Free Software Foundation) "Copyleft" which includes the GPL (GNU public license) and the Library GPL.

The GNU groff suite was written by James Clark. Pgraph was written by Larry McVoy.

Suggestions and bug reports for these programs can be mailed to: bug-groff@prep.ai.mit.edu.

Builder Notice(s):

Built and packaged for SGI by Larry McVoy. Patches and constructive suggestions for improvements groff should go to James Clark: jjc@jclark.com and for pgraph should go to lm@sgi.com .

Installation Information

GNU groff subsystems

fw_GNUgroff.sw.*

Execution only environment. The groff executables, fonts, etc.

fw_GNUgroff.man.*

Man pages.

fw_GNUgroff.src.*

Full source distribution.

Installation Method

All of the subsystems for this product can be installed using IRIX. You do not need to use the miniroot. Refer to the Software Installation Administrator's Guide for complete installation instructions.

Environment variables

The previewer uses an application resource in /usr/freeware/lib/X11/app-defaults. You will need to change an environment variable to get this to work; like so in bourne shells

XFILESEARCHPATH=/usr/lib/X11/%T/%N:/usr/freeware/lib/X11/%T/%N.
and like so in csh:

setenv XFILESEARCHPATH /usr/lib/X11/%T/%N:/usr/freeware/lib/X11/%T/%N.

Compatibility

This software is compatible with IRIX 5.3 and IRIX 6.x.