How To Install groff on Ubuntu
Posted on April 1, 2023 (Last modified on May 20, 2023 )
4 minutes • 658 words
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install groff on Ubuntu.
What is groff
groff is:
This package contains optional components of the GNU troff text-formatting system. The core package, groff-base, contains the traditional tools like troff, nroff, tbl, eqn, and pic. This package contains additional devices and drivers for output to DVI, HTML (when recommended packages are installed - see below), PDF, HP LaserJet printers, and Canon CAPSL LBP-4 and LBP-8 printers.
The X75, X75-12, X100, and X100-12 devices, which allow groff output to be conveniently viewed on an X display using the standard X11 fonts, are now included here. They were previously in a separate package, groff-x11.
Besides these, the groff package contains man pages describing the language and its macro sets, info documentation, and a number of supplementary programs:
- gxditview, which is used to display the output of the X* devices, and can also be used to view PostScript output from groff;
- grn, a preprocessor for pictures in the ‘gremlin’ format;
- tfmtodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tdvi’;
- hpftodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tlj4’;
- afmtodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tps’;
- refer, which preprocesses bibliographic references for use with groff;
- indxbib, which creates inverted indices for bibliographic databases used by ‘refer’;
- lkbib and lookbib, which search bibliographic databases;
- addftinfo, which adds metric information to troff font files for use with groff;
- pfbtops, which translates a PostScript font in .pfb format to ASCII for use with groff;
- mmroff, a simple groff preprocessor which expands references in mm;
- pic2graph, which converts PIC diagrams into cropped image files;
- eqn2graph, which converts EQN equations into cropped image files;
- pdfmom, which runs ‘groff -mom’ to produce PDFs.
All the standard macro packages are supported.
Some facilities only work if certain recommended packages are installed:
- ghostscript, netpbm, psutils: required for HTML output;
- imagemagick: required for the pic2graph and eqn2graph programs;
- libpaper1: paper size detection in dvi, lbp, lj4, and ps devices (falls back to a4 if not installed);
- perl: required for PDF output and for the chem preprocessor.
There are three methods to install groff on Ubuntu. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install groff Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install groff using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install groff
Install groff Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install groff using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install groff
Install groff Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install groff using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install groff
How To Uninstall groff on Ubuntu
To uninstall only the groff package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove groff
Uninstall groff And Its Dependencies
To uninstall groff and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove groff
Remove groff Configurations and Data
To remove groff configuration and data from Ubuntu we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge groff
Remove groff configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove groff configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge groff
Dependencies
groff have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install groff package on Ubuntu using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.