Intermediate Output Examples (The GNU Troff Manual)

#### 6.1.3 Intermediate Output Examples

This section presents the intermediate output generated from the same input for three different devices. The input is the sentence ‘`hell world`’ fed into `gtroff` on the command line.

High-resolution device `ps`

  This is the standard output of `gtroff` if no `-T` option is given.

      shell> echo "hell world" | groff -Z -T ps

      x T ps
      x res 72000 1 1
      x init

      p1
      x font 5 TR
      f5
      s10000
      V12000
      H72000
      thell
      wh2500
      tw
      H96620
      torld
      n12000 0

      x trailer
      V792000
      x stop

  This output can be fed into `grops` to get its representation as a PostScript file.

Low-resolution device `latin1`

  This is similar to the high-resolution device except that the positioning is done at a minor scale. Some comments (lines starting with ‘`#`’) were added for clarification; they were not generated by the formatter.

      shell> echo "hell world" | groff -Z -T latin1

      # prologue
      x T latin1
      x res 240 24 40
      x init

      # begin a new page
      p1
      # font setup
      x font 1 R
      f1
      s10
      # initial positioning on the page
      V40
      H0
      # write text 'hell'
      thell
      # inform about space, and issue a horizontal jump
      wh24
      # write text 'world'
      tworld
      # announce line break, but do nothing because...
      n40 0

      # ...the end of the document has been reached
      x trailer
      V2640
      x stop

  This output can be fed into `grotty` to get a formatted text document.

AT&T `troff` output

  Since a computer monitor has a much lower resolution than modern printers, the intermediate output for X11 devices can use the jump-and-write command with its 2-digit displacements.

      shell> echo "hell world" | groff -Z -T X100

      x T X100
      x res 100 1 1
      x init

      p1
      x font 5 TR
      f5
      s10
      V16
      H100
      # write text with jump-and-write commands
      ch07e07l03lw06w11o07r05l03dh7
      n16 0

      x trailer
      V1100
      x stop

  This output can be fed into `xditview` or `gxditview` for displaying in X.

  Due to the obsolete jump-and-write command, the text clusters in the AT&T `troff` output are almost unreadable.