what is used on freebsd? roff, nroff, troff, groff

R

rdindir

Hello All,

On FreeBSD 13.1, I only have roff installed. This does not have pic, tbl, or whatsoever, or maybe I am mistaken.

What is used for typesetting on FreeBSD from the roff/nroff/troff/groff family? Which one should we use?

Regards,
Riza
 
I think nothing "on FreeBSD" uses any of that, although man(1) can still deal with it, but the default format for manual pages is mdoc(7) (which is IIRC nowadays processed independently of roff(7)).

But I'm not sure what you really mean with that question?
 
rdindir said:
Hello All,

On FreeBSD 13.1, I only have roff installed. This does not have pic, tbl, or whatsoever, or maybe I am mistaken.

What is used for typesetting on FreeBSD from the roff/nroff/troff/groff family? Which one should we use?

Regards,
Riza
Click to expand...
I don't think the FreeBSD base system supports typesetting out of the box. You need to install something from the ports tree. For example groff or TeX/LaTeX.
 
zirias@ said:
I think nothing "on FreeBSD" uses any of that, although man(1) can still deal with it, but the default format for manual pages is mdoc(7) (which is IIRC nowadays processed independently of roff(7)).

But I'm not sure what you really mean with that question?
Click to expand...
I wanted to use troff/roff. In the past I have used groff I guess. I thought that I could use roff, that comes with the base system. But there are also other filters like eqn, pic, tbl. But these seem not be be installed with the base install.

I was wondering what I would have to do to use troff with eqn, pic, tbl, and the other filters to create documents with the roff package?
 
Holger said:
I don't think the FreeBSD base system supports typesetting out of the box. You need to install something from the ports tree. For example groff or TeX/LaTeX.
Click to expand...
Did not want to use latex/tex, but roff.

The system comes with roff. I can see the manual page. When I try to run roff, it can not be found.

In the manual page of roff, it mentions eqn. But when I try to execute it, there seem to be no eqn exceutable. Saying "sh: eqn: not found".

Either I am missing something, something that I might not have done when installing (choosing one of the packages maybe), or the system has the documentation (manual pages), but the system is missing the typesetting packages.
 
rdindir said:
In the manual page of roff, it mentions eqn. But when I try to execute it, there seem to be no eqn exceutable. Saying "sh: eqn: not found".
Click to expand...
The manual page for roff(7) clearly states "roff language reference for mandoc". It documents a language, not an executable. There is no roff utility documented therein. The fact that it's in man section number 7 indicates that it's likely not a command. Those are usually in sections 1 or 8.

The situation is similar for eqn(7). That page also documents a language reference.
 
Is anybody using troff for typesetting? And do you prefer heirloom troff or groff?
Jose said:
The manual page for roff(7) clearly states "roff language reference for mandoc". It documents a language, not an executable. There is no roff utility documented therein. The fact that it's in man section number 7 indicates that it's likely not a command. Those are usually in sections 1 or 8.

The situation is similar for eqn(7). That page also documents a language reference.
Click to expand...
Oh I did not look carefully then. Very sorry for the missunderstanding.
 
I am a long-time troff(1) user. I even once had the use of an Autologic APS5 phototypesetter (which is what they used inside Bell Labs).

I didn't even know that the textproc/heirloom-doctools existed. Their description says that they are portable and enhanced versions of the utilities released by Sun as part of OpenSolaris, and, for pic, grap, mpm, and some minor parts, by Lucent as part of Plan 9. Their installation conflicts with the textproc/grap, textproc/groff, japanese/ja-groff, and devel/util-linux packages. You would want to have a well understood reason to use them.

I just install the textproc/groff package. Add textproc/grap if you need it.
 
gpw928 said:
I am a long-time troff(1) user. I even once had the use of an Autologic APS5 phototypesetter (which is what they used inside Bell Labs).

I didn't even know that the textproc/heirloom-doctools existed. Their description says that they are portable and enhanced versions of the utilities released by Sun as part of OpenSolaris, and, for pic, grap, mpm, and some minor parts, by Lucent as part of Plan 9. Their installation conflicts with the textproc/grap, textproc/groff, japanese/ja-groff, and devel/util-linux packages. You would want to have a well understood reason to use them.

I just install the textproc/groff package. Add textproc/grap if you need it.
Click to expand...
That's what I am going to use.
 
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