Nroff: Difference between revisions
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'''nroff''' (short for "new [[roff]]") is a [[Unix]] [[text-formatting]] [[computer program|program]]. It produces output suitable for simple fixed-width [[computer printer|printers]] and [[computer terminal|terminal]] windows. It is an integral part of the [[Unix]] help system, being used to format [[man page]]s for display. |
'''nroff''' (short for "new [[roff (computer program)|roff]]") is a [[Unix]] [[text-formatting]] [[computer program|program]]. It produces output suitable for simple fixed-width [[computer printer|printers]] and [[computer terminal|terminal]] windows. It is an integral part of the [[Unix]] help system, being used to format [[man page]]s for display. |
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== History == |
== History == |
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Revision as of 23:20, 2 April 2016
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2015) |
nroff (short for "new roff") is a Unix text-formatting program. It produces output suitable for simple fixed-width printers and terminal windows. It is an integral part of the Unix help system, being used to format man pages for display.
History
nroff was written by Joe Ossanna for Version 2 Unix,[1] in Assembly language and then ported to C.
It was a descendant of the RUNOFF program from CTSS, the first computerized text-formatting program, and is a predecessor of the Unix troff document processing system.
There is also a free software version of nroff in the groff package.
Variants
The Minix operating system, among others, uses a clone of nroff called cawf by Vic Abell, based on awf, the Amazingly Workable Formatter designed in awk by Henry Spencer. These are not full replacements for the nroff/troff suite of tools, but are sufficient for display and printing of basic documents and manual pages.
In addition, a simplified version of nroff is available in Ratfor source code form as an example in the book Software Tools by Brian Kernighan and P.J. Plauger.
See also
References
- ^ McIlroy, M. D. (1987). A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 (PDF) (Technical report). CSTR. Bell Labs. 139.
External links
- source code for Henry Spencer's AWF
- troff/nroff quick reference
- nroff source code in Illumos. Explanation by Bryan Cantrill
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