From Markdown To Groff - Groff Tutorial 1

This is the first in a series of videos taking you from a beginner to a pro at using GNU groff.

This tutorial is focused on using the ms macros to replicate some of the functionality seen with Pandoc and LaTeX.

Let me know what you think and if there is anything specific you would like to learn about.

Timecodes
00:00 - Intro
01:16 - Important commands
03:24 - Intro to Syntax
03:38 - Numbered Headings
04:40 - Paragraphs
04:48 - Numbered Subheadings
05:26 - Non Numbered Headings
06:40 - Different types of Headings
08:45 - Quoted Blocks
11:29 - Lists
14:39 - Low Level Indentation
16:29 - Bold, Italic, And Monospace
20:45 - Comments
22:02 - Boxed Text
24:17 - Underlining
24:43 - Super Scripts (without EQN)
25:55 - Titles
27:04 - Page Break
28:09 - Debugging
29:28 - Learning More Groff Requests
30:05 - Outro

[argonwheatbelly]

I remember using tbl, eqn, and troff to write some docs, outputting dvi, and then piping it through dvi2ps to one of our PS printers many decades ago. Later, I used LaTeX for some things. Even had handwritten postscript files as add-ins. This is useful and fun.

[renatod.o.]

Fantastic video! Will look deeper into others aswell, for those writing in a language that have accents like "ç á" I suggest using the flag "-K utf8"

[MikeRitterOnline]

RE "QP", when quoting longer text from documents or speeches in written products or preparing presentations I often use block quotes. It offsets the quote from the rest of the document. This is especially helpful when publishing to different style guides as one can define a different style to output.

[kevinnel]

I would like to know some more about the base groff stuff, i encountered a little bit of it when trying to get source highting for code listings

[nerdycatgamer]

13:18 my immediate assumption is that 'R' stands for 'Right' !

[DaraulHarris]

Hey, any chance you'll do a video on mom?

[stefanRastocky]

Hi, this is a nice intro. I have several questions though. Whats that o something.pdf you are doing there? Is it just an alias for zathura name.pdf? Also how do you make the windows flash on highlight? Is it native in dwm or some other app? and whats that lightning bolt in your prompt? sorry for such amount of questions, it looks like a well set up DWM setup

[Linux.Learner]

THANK YOU. BUT, i got an ERROR: "groff: can't find 'DESC' file".

[fish]

Thank you so much for this fantastic series! I know groff/troff from Luke Smith's video, but his introduction to me is not comprehensive, and the math typeset result is not beautiful.

I wonder is there any way to make the math equation in groff look as good as latex?

[howhuiliew]

To promote groff, I think your video need to introduce the things which can be nicely achieved in groff but not LaTeX. Things like \hfil and \hfill really makes me enjoy LaTeX. However, I am sometimes annoyed by LaTeX that I can't do that in tabbing environment. Introducing how to use groff in table, figures and source code listing is probably going to attract more people to consider groff.

[adamjo]

is there a way to use ligatures in groff? or a different way to install a font that has ligatures?
I'm trying to use it with arabic, I installed the font but the characters don't connect to form words; it's treated as english characters.

[jessechen]

Hi, which the desktop manager you use in this video, it looks very cool.

[ypaut]

Is there any other way than \['e] to get é in Groff ? I'd like it to parse it automatically

[visrut]

Why you stooped making videos on Groff it's really good, and I make pdf also please continue .