4.1.1 Options

The command line format for using the man macros with groff is:

groff -m man [ -rLL=length ] [ -rLT=length ] [ -rFT=dist ]
      [ -rcR=1 ] [ -rC1 ] [ -rD1 ] [-rHY=flags ]
      [ -rPnnn ] [ -rSxx ] [ -rXnnn ]
      [ -rIN=length ] [ -rSN=length ] [ files… ]

It is possible to use ‘-man’ instead of ‘-m man’.

-rcR=1

This option (the default if a TTY output device is used) creates a single, very long page instead of multiple pages. Use -rcR=0 to disable it.

-rC1

If more than one manual page is given on the command line, number the pages continuously, rather than starting each at 1.

-rD1

Double-sided printing. Footers for even and odd pages are formatted differently.

-rFT=dist

Set the position of the footer text to dist. If positive, the distance is measured relative to the top of the page, otherwise it is relative to the bottom. The default is -0.5i.

-rHY=flags

Set hyphenation flags. Possible values are 1 to hyphenate without restrictions, 2 to not hyphenate the last word on a page, 4 to not hyphenate the last two characters of a word, and 8 to not hyphenate the first two characters of a word. These values are additive; the default is 14.

-rIN=length

Set the body text indentation to length. If not specified, the indentation defaults to 7n (7 characters) in nroff mode and 7.2n otherwise. For nroff, this value should always be an integer multiple of unit ‘n’ to get consistent indentation.

-rLL=length

Set line length to length. If not specified, the line length is set to respect any value set by a prior ‘ll’ request (which must be in effect when the ‘TH’ macro is invoked), if this differs from the built-in default for the formatter; otherwise it defaults to 78n in nroff mode (this is 78 characters per line) and 6.5i in troff mode.⁶

-rLT=length

Set title length to length. If not specified, the title length defaults to the line length.

-rPnnn

Page numbering starts with nnn rather than with 1.

-rSxx

Use xx (which can be 10, 11, or 12pt) as the base document font size instead of the default value of 10pt.

-rSN=length

Set the indentation for sub-subheadings to length. If not specified, the indentation defaults to 3n.

-rXnnn

After page nnn, number pages as nnna, nnnb, nnnc, etc. For example, the option -rX2 produces the following page numbers: 1, 2, 2a, 2b, 2c, etc.