1.3 groff Capabilities

So what exactly is groff capable of doing? groff provides a wide range of low-level text formatting operations. Using these, it is possible to perform a wide range of formatting tasks, such as footnotes, table of contents, multiple columns, etc. Here’s a list of the most important operations supported by groff:

• text filling, adjusting, and centering
• hyphenation
• page control
• font and glyph size control
• vertical spacing (e.g. double-spacing)
• line length and indenting
• macros, strings, diversions, and traps
• number registers
• tabs, leaders, and fields
• input and output conventions and character translation
• overstrike, bracket, line drawing, and zero-width functions
• local horizontal and vertical motions and the width function
• three-part titles
• output line numbering
• conditional acceptance of input
• environment switching
• insertions from the standard input
• input/output file switching
• output and error messages