************************************************************************
* Official mandoc TODO.
* $Id$
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************************************************************************
* parser bugs
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- .TP before .SH is still FATAL in man(7)
reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:54:54 -0500
- The mdoc(7) parser should handle `\.' as punctuation:
.Ql .if ${VAR} op something \.
should produce
`.if ${VAR} op something'.
not
`.if ${VAR} op something .'
as seen in make(1).
To escape the dot, one would use `\&.'.
- the roff parser doesn't tolerate additional characters between
a macro and the \} terminating a conditional block, e.g.
.if n \{
.br \}
reported by ulrich spoerlein Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:39:50 +0200
************************************************************************
* formatter bugs
************************************************************************
************************************************************************
* missing features
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--- missing roff features ----------------------------------------------
- .ad (adjust margins)
.ad l -- adjust left margin only (flush left)
.ad r -- adjust right margin only (flush right)
.ad c -- center text on line
.ad b -- adjust both margins (alias: .ad n)
.na -- temporarily disable adjustment without changing the mode
.ad -- re-enable adjustment without changing the mode
Adjustment mode is ignored while in no-fill mode (.nf).
- .it (line traps) occur in mysql(1), yasm_arch(7)
generated by DocBook XSL Stylesheets v1.71.1 <http://docbook.sf.net/>
reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:48:18 -0500
- .ns (no-space mode) occurs in xine-config(1)
reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
- xloadimage(1) wants .ti (temporary indent), rep by naddy@
- .ta (tab settings) occurs in ircbug(1) and probably gnats(1)
reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:50:51 -0500
- pod2man expects `tr' to be implemented for \*(-- to work
- \c (interrupted text) occurs in chat(8)
--- missing mdoc features ----------------------------------------------
- fix bad block nesting involving multiple identical explicit blocks
see the OpenBSD mdoc_macro.c 1.47 commit message
- .Bl -column .Xo support is missing
ultimate goal:
restore .Xr and .Dv to
lib/libc/compat-43/sigvec.3
lib/libc/gen/signal.3
lib/libc/sys/sigaction.2
- edge case: decide how to deal with blk_full bad nesting, e.g.
.Sh .Nm .Bk .Nm .Ek .Sh found by jmc@ in ssh-keygen(1)
from jmc@ Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:10:32 +0100
- \\ is now implemented correctly
* when defining strings and macros using .ds and .de
* when parsing roff(7) and man(7) macro arguments
It does not yet work in mdoc(7) macro arguments
because libmdoc does not yet use mandoc_getarg().
Also check what happens in plain text, it must be identical to \e.
- .Bd -filled should not be the same as .Bd -ragged, but align both
the left and right margin. In groff, it is implemented in terms
of .ad b, which we don't have either. Found in cksum(1).
- implement blank `Bl -column', such as
.Bl -column
.It foo Ta bar
.El
- explicitly disallow nested `Bl -column', which would clobber internal
flags defined for struct mdoc_macro
- inside `.Bl -column' phrases, punctuation is handled like normal
text, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Fl x . Ta ...' should give "-x -."
- inside `.Bl -column' phrases, TERMP_IGNDELIM handling by `Pf'
is not safe, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Pf a b .' gives "ab."
but should give "ab ."
- set a meaningful default if no `Bl' list type is assigned
- have a blank `It' head for `Bl -tag' not puke
- prohibit `Nm' from having non-text HEAD children
(e.g., NetBSD mDNSShared/dns-sd.1)
(mdoc_html.c and mdoc_term.c `Nm' handlers can be slightly simplified)
--- missing man features -----------------------------------------------
- bashbug(1) complains "line scope broken" after
.SM
.B something
should either just work or be a warning
reported by naddy@
- groff an-ext.tmac macros (.UR, .UE) occur in xine(5)
reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
--- missing tbl features -----------------------------------------------
- implement basic non-parametric .de to support e.g. sox(1)
reported by naddy@ Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:51:57 +0200
*** sox(1) still doesn't work, tbl(1) errors need investigation
--- missing misc features ----------------------------------------------
- clean up escape sequence handling, creating three classes:
(1) fully implemented, or parsed and ignored without loss of content
(2) unimplemented, potentially causing loss of content
or serious mangling of formatting (e.g. \n) -> ERROR
see textproc/mgdiff(1) for nice examples
(3) undefined, just output the character -> perhaps WARNING
- The \t escape sequence is the same as a literal tab, see for example
the ASCII table in hexdump(1) where
.Bl -column \&000_nu \&001_so \&002_st \&003_et \&004_eo
.It \&000\ nul\t001\ soh\t002\ stx\t003\ etx\t004\ eot\t005\ enq
produces
000 nul 001 soh 002 stx 003 etx 004 eot 005 enq
and the example in oldrdist(1)
- look at pages generated from reStructeredText, e.g. devel/mercurial hg(1)
These are a weird mixture of man(7) and custom autogenerated low-level
roff stuff. Figure out to what extent we can cope.
For details, see http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
noted by stsp@ Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:17:55 +0200
reminded by nicm@ Mon, 3 May 2010 09:52:41 +0100
- check compatibility with Plan9:
http://swtch.com/usr/local/plan9/tmac/tmac.an
http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man7/man.html
"Anthony J. Bentley" <anthonyjbentley@gmail.com> 28 Dec 2010 21:58:40 -0700
************************************************************************
* formatting issues: ugly output
************************************************************************
- double quotes inside double quotes are escaped by doubling them
implement this in mdoc(7), too
so far, we only have it in roff(7) and man(7)
reminded by millert@ Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:29:52 -0500
- perl(1) SYNOPSIS looks bad; reported by deraadt@
1) man(7) seems to need SYNOPSIS .Nm blocks, too
- In .Bl -column,
.It Em Authentication<tab>Key Length
ought to render "Key Length" with emphasis, too,
see OpenBSD iked.conf(5).
- empty phrases in .Bl column produce too few blanks
try e.g. .Bl -column It Ta Ta
reported by millert Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:13:46 -0400
- .%T can have trailing punctuation. Currently, it puts the trailing
punctuation into a trailing MDOC_TEXT element inside its own scope.
That element should rather be outside its scope, such that the
punctuation does not get underlines. This is not trivial to
implement because .%T then needs some features of in_line_eoln() -
slurp all arguments into one single text element - and one feature
of in_line() - put trailing punctuation out of scope.
Found in mount_nfs(8) and exports(5), search for "Appendix".
- in enclosures, mandoc sometimes fancies a bogus end of sentence
reminded by jmc@ Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:13:39 +0059
************************************************************************
* formatting issues: gratuitious differences
************************************************************************
- .Rv (and probably .Ex) print different text if an `Nm' has been named
or not (run a manual without `Nm blah' to see this). I'm not sure
that this exists in the wild, but it's still an error.
- In .Bl -bullet, the groff bullet is "+\b+\bo\bo", the mandoc bullet
is just "o\bo".
see for example OpenBSD ksh(1)
- The characters "|" and "\*(Ba" should never be bold,
not even in the middle of a word, e.g. ".Cm b\*(Bac" in
"mknod [-m mode] name b|c major minor"
in OpenBSD ksh(1)
- A bogus .Pp between two .It must not produce a double blank line,
see between -R and -r in OpenBSD rm(1), before "update" in mount(8),
or in DIAGNOSTICS in init(8), or before "is always true" in ksh(1).
The same happens with .Pp just before .El, see bgpd.conf(5).
Also have `It' complain if `Pp' is invoked at certain times (not
-compact?).
- If the *first* line after .It is .Pp, break the line right after
the tag, do not pad with space characters before breaking.
See the description of the a, c, and i commands in sed(1).
- If the first line after .It is .D1, do not assert a blank line
in between, see for example tmux(1).
reported by nicm@ 13 Jan 2011 00:18:57 +0000
- .Nx 1.0a
should be "NetBSD 1.0A", not "NetBSD 1.0a",
see OpenBSD ccdconfig(8).
- The space character joining .Dx .Fx .Nx .Ox (are these all?) to its
argument is non-breaking. See the cdio(1) HISTORY and many others.
- .Bx uses a dash before its argument, not a space,
see for example the chpass(1) and column(1) HISTORY.
Besides, the second argument is capitalized, for example,
.Bx 4.3 tahoe .
produces 4.3BSD-Tahoe.
- In .Bl -tag, if a tag exceeds the right margin and must be continued
on the next line, it must be indented by -width, not width+1;
see "rule block|pass" in OpenBSD ifconfig(8).
- When the -width string contains macros, the macros must be rendered
before measuring the width, for example
.Bl -tag -width ".Dv message"
in magic(5), located in src/usr.bin/file, is the same
as -width 7n, not -width 11n.
- The \& zero-width character counts as output.
That is, when it is alone on a line between two .Pp,
we want three blank lines, not two as in mandoc.
- When .Fn arguments exceed one output line, all but the first
should be indented, see e.g. rpc(3);
reported by jmc@ on discuss@ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:48:33 +0100
- .Ns should only be effective when called by another macro,
not as a stand-alone macro at the beginning of a line;
see for example the awk(1) SYNOPSIS.
- .Ns should work when called at the end of an input line, see
the following code in vi(1):
.It Xo
.Op Ar line
.Cm a Ns Op Cm ppend Ns
.Op Cm !\&
.Xc
The input text is appended after the specified line.
- Header lines of excessive length:
Port OpenBSD man_term.c rev. 1.25 to mdoc_term.c
and document it in mdoc(7) and man(7) COMPATIBILITY
found while talking to Chris Bennett
- In man(7), the sequence
.HP
one line of regular text
.SH
should not produce two blank lines before the .SH,
see for example named-checkconf(8).
- In man(7), the sequence
regular text
.RS
.IP
should have a blank line between the text and the beginning of the
indented paragraph, see for example sudo(1).
- At least sometimes, .sp is ignored right after .SH; see named.conf(5).
- trailing whitespace must be ignored even when followed by a font escape,
see for example
makes
\fBdig \fR
operate in batch mode
in dig(1).
************************************************************************
* error reporting issues
************************************************************************
************************************************************************
* performance issues
************************************************************************
Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even faster. These are
- improve hashing mechanism for macros (quite important: performance)
- improve hashing mechanism for characters (not as important)
- the PDF file is HUGE: this can be reduced by using relative offsets
************************************************************************
* structural issues
************************************************************************
- Find better ways to prevent endless loops
in roff(7) macro and string expansion.
