NAME

deroff — remove nroff/troff, eqn, pic and tbl constructs

SYNOPSIS

deroff

[-ikpw] [-m a | e | l | m | s] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

deroff reads each file in sequence and removes all nroff(1) and troff(1) command lines, backslash constructions, macro definitions, eqn(1) constructs (between “.EQ” and “.EN” lines or between delimiters), pic(1) pictures, and table descriptions and writes the remainder to the standard output. deroff follows chains of included files (“.so” and “.nx” commands); if a file has already been included, a “.so” is ignored and a “.nx” terminates execution. If no input file is given, deroff reads from the standard input.

The options are as follows:

-i

Ignore “.so” and “.nx” commands.

-k

Keep blocks of text intact. This is the default behavior unless the -m option is given.

-m

Enable support for common macro packages. The -m option takes the following arguments:

a

recognize man(7) macros.

e

recognize me(7) macros.

l

remove list constructs.

m

recognize mm(7) macros.

s

recognize ms(7) macros.

-p

Preserve paragraph macros. This option only has an effect if the -m option is also specified.

-w

Output a word list, one ‘word’ (string of letters, digits, and apostrophes, beginning with a letter; apostrophes are removed) per line, and all other characters ignored. Normally, the output follows the original, with the deletions mentioned above.

SEE ALSO

eqn(1), nroff(1), pic(1), tbl(1), troff(1)

HISTORY

deroff appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

BUGS

deroff is not a complete troff(1) interpreter, so it can be confused by subtle constructs. Most errors result in too much rather than too little output.

The -ml option does not correctly handle nested lists.