path: root/TODO

************************************************************************
* Official mandoc TODO.
* $Id$
************************************************************************

************************************************************************
* parser bugs
************************************************************************

- It should be noted that in mandoc, the TBL macros are interpreted as
  real roff macros (e.g., `.  TS' is ok), while the troff preprocessor
  only looks for `.TS' (static string).  This should be noted in the
  COMPATIBILITY section.  The same applies for nascent `.EQ' (as it is
  now, `.EN' is processed as a static string).

- .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
************************************************************************

--- 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
************************************************************************

- a column list with blank `Ta' cells triggers a spurrious
  start-with-whitespace printing of a newline

- 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).

- 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 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.