Groff

Groff

Groff is an open source text processor and document formatting system similar to troff. It is used to format Unix manual pages and possesses powerful text formatting capabilities for producing publication quality output.
Office & Productivity Document Processing
Groff image
text formatting typesetting documents
Groff alternatives ➤

Groff: Open Source Text Processor & Document Formatter

A free and open source software alternative, Groff offers robust text formatting capabilities, ideal for creating high-quality documents, similar to troff.

What is Groff?

Groff is an open source text processing and typesetting system for the Unix/Linux operating system. It is the GNU implementation of the troff document formatting system found on Unix systems.

Groff builds on troff by adding enhancements and improvements for increased typography capabilities while maintaining compatibility with existing troff document formats. Some key features and capabilities of Groff include:

  • Formatting and typesetting for multilingual documents.
  • Advanced typographic controls like kerning, ligatures, hyphenation, justification, tables, math typesetting, and more.
  • Pic for drawing diagrams and figures.
  • Mom macros for typesetting books, manuals, letters, and other documents.
  • eqn for mathematical formulas.
  • tbl for tables.
  • Compatibility with man page formatting.

Some common uses of Groff include formatting Unix manual pages, typesetting books and lengthy documents, mathematical documents, multilingual documents, and any application requiring advanced publishing quality typography. It produces PostScript and PDF output.

Groff is a powerful, open source alternative to commercial publishing and typesetting systems. Its high capability for typographic control makes it suitable for producing printed books, academic journals, documentation, and other complex multi-page documents with intricate formatting needs.

Groff Features

Features

  1. Text formatting system
  2. Used to format Unix manual pages
  3. Powerful text formatting capabilities
  4. Produces publication quality output

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Open source

Robust formatting capabilities

Widely used for Unix documentation

Mature and stable codebase

Cons

Steep learning curve

Not as user friendly as more modern systems

Limited WYSIWYG capabilities

Requires knowledge of formatting macros

Official Links

Official Website
https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/

The Best Groff Alternatives

Top Office & Productivity and Document Processing and other similar apps like Groff

Here are some alternatives to Groff:

Pollen icon
Pollen
DocBook icon
DocBook
ConTeXt (Typesetting System) icon
ConTeXt (Typesetting System)
Text::Amuse icon
Text::Amuse
Suggest an alternative ❐

Pollen icon

Pollen

Pollen is an open-source publishing system designed for writing beautiful books and structured content using a lightweight markup language. It was created by Matthew Butterick to offer an alternative to traditional publishing workflows.Some key features and benefits of Pollen include:Write content using a simple, Markdown-inspired syntax called “Pollen markup”. Focus...
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DocBook icon

DocBook

DocBook is an XML-based markup language that is well-suited for writing technical documentation. It has a large number of semantic markup constructs that allow you to clearly identify important components of documentation such as chapters, sections, code examples, figures, tables, notes, warnings, etc.The advantage of DocBook over using something like...
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ConTeXt (Typesetting System) icon

ConTeXt (Typesetting System)

ConTeXt is an open-source document preparation system and typesetting engine, designed by Hans Hagen in the early 1990s as an alternative to LaTeX. It is implemented mainly in the TeX macro language and offers extensive typographical capabilities beyond what is available in LaTeX.Some key features and advantages of ConTeXt include:Highly...
ConTeXt (Typesetting System) image
Text::Amuse icon

Text::Amuse

Text::Amuse is a Perl module that provides functionality for generating random amusing text based on context-free grammars. The text is produced by combining words and phrases based on a set of grammatical rules defined in the module.Some key features and usage scenarios for Text::Amuse include:Generating humorous nonsensical sentences, poems, dialogues,...
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