GROFF_FONT(5) File Formats Manual GROFF_FONT(5)
NAME
groff_font - format of groff device and font description files
DESCRIPTION
The groff font format is roughly a superset of the ditroff font format.
The font files for device name are stored in a directory devname.
There are two types of file: a device description file called DESC and
for each font F, a font file called F. These are text files; unlike
the ditroff font format, there is no associated binary format.
DESC file format
The DESC file can contain the following types of line as shown below.
Later entries in the file override previous values.
Empty lines are ignored.
charset
This line and everything following in the file are ignored. It
is allowed for the sake of backwards compatibility.
family fam
The default font family is fam.
fonts n F1 F2 F3 ... Fn
Fonts F1, ..., Fn are mounted in the font positions m+1, ...,
m+n where m is the number of styles. This command may extend
over more than one line. A font name of 0 causes no font to be
mounted on the corresponding font position.
hor n The horizontal resolution is n machine units.
image_generator string
Needed for grohtml only. It specifies the program to generate
PNG images from PostScript input. Under GNU/Linux this is usu-
ally gs but under other systems (notably cygwin) it might be set
to another name.
paperlength n
The physical vertical dimension of the output medium in machine
units. This isn't used by troff itself but by output devices.
Deprecated. Use papersize instead.
papersize string
Select a paper size. Valid values for string are the ISO paper
types A0–A7, B0–B7, C0–C7, D0–D7, DL, and the US paper types
letter, legal, tabloid, ledger, statement, executive, com10, and
monarch. Case is not significant for string if it holds prede-
fined paper types. Alternatively, string can be a file name
(e.g. /etc/papersize); if the file can be opened, groff reads
the first line and tests for the above paper sizes. Finally,
string can be a custom paper size in the format length,width (no
spaces before and after the comma). Both length and width must
have a unit appended; valid values are ‘i’ for inches, ‘c’ for
centimeters, ‘p’ for points, and ‘P’ for picas. Example:
12c,235p. An argument which starts with a digit is always
treated as a custom paper format. papersize sets both the ver-
tical and horizontal dimension of the output medium.
More than one argument can be specified; groff scans from left
to right and uses the first valid paper specification.
paperwidth n
The physical horizontal dimension of the output medium in ma-
chine units. Deprecated. Use papersize instead. This isn't
used by troff itself but by output devices.
pass_filenames
Make troff tell the driver the source file name being processed.
This is achieved by another tcommand: F filename.
postpro program
Use program as the postprocessor.
prepro program
Call program as a preprocessor.
print program
Use program as the spooler program for printing. If omitted,
the -l and -L options of groff are ignored.
res n There are n machine units per inch.
sizes s1 s2 ... sn 0
This means that the device has fonts at s1, s2, ..., sn scaled
points. The list of sizes must be terminated by a 0. Each si
can also be a range of sizes m–n. The list can extend over more
than one line.
sizescale n
The scale factor for point sizes. By default this has a value
of 1. One scaled point is equal to one point/n. The arguments
to the unitwidth and sizes commands are given in scaled points.
styles S1 S2 ... Sm
The first m font positions are associated with styles S1, ...,
Sm.
tcommand
This means that the postprocessor can handle the t and u output
commands.
unicode
Indicate that the output device supports the complete Unicode
repertoire. Useful only for devices which produce character en-
tities instead of glyphs.
If unicode is present, no charset section is required in the
font description files since the Unicode handling built into
groff is used. However, if there are entries in a charset sec-
tion, they either override the default mappings for those par-
ticular characters or add new mappings (normally for composite
characters).
This is used for -Tutf8, -Thtml, and -Txhtml.
unitwidth n
Quantities in the font files are given in machine units for
fonts whose point size is n scaled points.
unscaled_charwidths
Make the font handling module always return unscaled glyph
widths. Needed for the grohtml device.
use_charnames_in_special
This command indicates that troff should encode named glyphs in-
side special commands.
vert n The vertical resolution is n machine units.
The res, unitwidth, fonts, and sizes lines are compulsory. Not all
commands in the DESC file are used by troff itself; some of the key-
words (or even additional ones) are used by postprocessors to store ar-
bitrary information about the device.
Here a list of obsolete keywords which are recognized by groff but com-
pletely ignored: spare1, spare2, biggestfont.
Font file format
A font file has two sections; empty lines are ignored in both of them.
The first section is a sequence of lines each containing a sequence of
blank delimited words; the first word in the line is a key, and subse-
quent words give a value for that key.
ligatures lig1 lig2 ... lign [0]
Glyphs lig1, lig2, ..., lign are ligatures; possible ligatures
are ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. For backwards compatibility, the
list of ligatures may be terminated with a 0. The list of liga-
tures may not extend over more than one line.
name F The name of the font is F.
slant n
The glyphs of the font have a slant of n degrees. (Positive
means forward.)
spacewidth n
The normal width of a space is n.
special
The font is special; this means that when a glyph is requested
that is not present in the current font, it is searched for in
any special fonts that are mounted.
Other commands are ignored by troff but may be used by postprocessors
to store arbitrary information about the font in the font file.
The first section can contain comments which start with the # character
and extend to the end of a line.
The second section contains one or two subsections. It must contain a
charset subsection and it may also contain a kernpairs subsection.
These subsections can appear in any order. Each subsection starts with
a word on a line by itself.
The word charset starts the charset subsection. The charset line is
followed by a sequence of lines. Each line gives information for one
glyph. A line comprises a number of fields separated by blanks or
tabs. The format is
name metrics type code [entity_name] [-- comment]
name identifies the glyph: if name is a single glyph c then it corre-
sponds to the groff input character c; if it is of the form \c where c
is a single character, then it corresponds to the special character
\[c]; otherwise it corresponds to the groff input character \[name].
If it is exactly two characters xx it can be entered as \(xx. Note
that single-letter special characters can't be accessed as \c; the only
exception is ‘\-’ which is identical to ‘\[-]’. The name --- is spe-
cial and indicates that the glyph is unnamed; such glyphs can only be
used by means of the \N escape sequence in troff.
The type field gives the glyph type:
1 means the glyph has a descender, for example, ‘p’;
2 means the glyph has an ascender, for example, ‘b’;
3 means the glyph has both an ascender and a descender, for exam-
ple, ‘(’.
The code field gives the code which the postprocessor uses to print the
glyph. The glyph can also be input to groff using this code by means
of the \N escape sequence. The code can be any integer. If it starts
with a 0 it is interpreted as octal; if it starts with 0x or 0X it is
interpreted as hexadecimal. Note, however, that the \N escape sequence
only accepts a decimal integer.
The entity_name field gives an ASCII string identifying the glyph which
the postprocessor uses to print that glyph. This field is optional and
is currently used by grops to build sub-encoding arrays for PS fonts
containing more than 256 glyphs. (It has also been used for grohtml's
entity names but for efficiency reasons this data is now compiled di-
rectly into grohtml.)
Anything on the line after the encoding field or ‘--’ are ignored.
The metrics field has the form (in one line; it is broken here for the
sake of readability):
width[,height[,depth[,italic-correction
[,left-italic-correction[,subscript-correction]]]]]
There must not be any spaces between these subfields. Missing sub-
fields are assumed to be 0. The subfields are all decimal integers.
Since there is no associated binary format, these values are not re-
quired to fit into a variable of type char as they are in ditroff. The
width subfields gives the width of the glyph. The height subfield
gives the height of the glyph (upwards is positive); if a glyph does
not extend above the baseline, it should be given a zero height, rather
than a negative height. The depth subfield gives the depth of the
glyph, that is, the distance below the baseline to which the glyph ex-
tends (downwards is positive); if a glyph does not extend below the
baseline, it should be given a zero depth, rather than a negative
depth. The italic-correction subfield gives the amount of space that
should be added after the glyph when it is immediately to be followed
by a glyph from a roman font. The left-italic-correction subfield
gives the amount of space that should be added before the glyph when it
is immediately to be preceded by a glyph from a roman font. The sub-
script-correction gives the amount of space that should be added after
a glyph before adding a subscript. This should be less than the italic
correction.
A line in the charset section can also have the format
name "
This indicates that name is just another name for the glyph mentioned
in the preceding line.
The word kernpairs starts the kernpairs section. This contains a se-
quence of lines of the form:
c1 c2 n
This means that when glyph c1 appears next to glyph c2 the space be-
tween them should be increased by n. Most entries in kernpairs section
have a negative value for n.
FILES
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devname/DESC
Device description file for device name.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.4/font/devname/F
Font file for font F of device name.
SEE ALSO
groff_out(5), troff(1), addftinfo(1), afmtodit(1)
A man page name(n) of section n can be viewed either with
$ man n name
for text mode or
$ groffer n name
for graphical mode (default is PDF mode).
groff 1.22.4 7 March 2023 GROFF_FONT(5)
Generated by dwww version 1.15 on Thu Jun 20 14:17:40 CEST 2024.