Xroff, an alternative troff syntax John Ankarström Introduction Xroff is an alternative syntax for troff, visually inspired by SGML/XML. It differs from troff’s default syntax in the following ways: 1. Xroff requests begin with a less‐than sign and end with a greater‐than sign, e.g., . These symbols may be es‐ caped with a backslash.* 2. Xroff requests may be used inline. The following works as expected: (bold).** 3. Xroff ignores empty lines. 4. Default troff syntax may be used between . The similarities with XML end at the visual level. Unlike XML, xroff is unstructured and imperative. There is no con‐ cept of closing tags. Example \\fB\\$*\\fR<.> Example document John Doe Pellentesque dapibus suscipit ligula. Donec posuere augue in quam. Etiam vel tortor sodales tellus ultricies commodo. Suspendisse potenti. Aenean in sem ac leo mollis blandit. Donec neque quam, dignissim in, mollis nec, sagittis eu, wisi. Introduction vel est convallis dignissim. Fusce suscipit, wisi nec facilisis facilisis, est dui fermentum leo, quis tempor ligula erat quis odio. Nunc porta vulputate tellus. ─────────── * For comparison, default troff requests begin with a newline and a control character, usually a period or an apostrophe, and end with another new‐ line. ** Before an inline request, xroff automatically inserts a \c escape when appropriate. 10 June 2022 ‐2‐ Xroff The program xroff translates xroff source to troff source. Xroff‐mode For Emacs users, there is a major mode named xroff‐mode that provides syntax highlighting for xroff source. To further improve the writing experience, I also recommend olivetti‐ mode. Caveats Xroff does not treat indented lines specially. As such, in‐ dentation cannot be used to convey structure. 10 June 2022