path: root/mandoc.1

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.\" Copyright (c) 2009 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
.\"
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.Dd $Mdocdate$
.Dt MANDOC 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm mandoc
.Nd format and display UNIX manuals
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm mandoc
.Op Fl V
.Op Fl f Ns Ar option
.Op Fl m Ns Ar format
.Op Fl O Ns Ar option
.Op Fl T Ns Ar output
.Op Fl W Ns Ar err
.Op Ar file...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility formats
.Ux
manual pages for display.
The arguments are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl f Ns Ar option
Comma-separated compiler options.
See
.Sx Compiler Options
for details.
.It Fl m Ns Ar format
Input format.
See
.Sx Input Formats
for available formats.
Defaults to
.Fl m Ns Cm andoc .
.It Fl O Ns Ar option
Comma-separated output options.
.It Fl T Ns Ar output
Output format.
See
.Sx Output Formats
for available formats.
Defaults to
.Fl T Ns Cm ascii .
.It Fl V
Print version and exit.
.It Fl W Ns Ar err
Comma-separated warning options.
Use
.Fl W Ns Cm all
to print warnings,
.Fl W Ns Cm error
for warnings to be considered errors and cause utility
termination.
Multiple
.Fl W
arguments may be comma-separated, such as
.Fl W Ns Cm error , Ns Cm all .
.It Ar file
Read input from zero or more files.
If unspecified, reads from stdin.
If multiple files are specified,
.Nm
will halt with the first failed parse.
.El
.Pp
By default,
.Nm
reads
.Xr mdoc 7
or
.Xr man 7
text from stdin, implying
.Fl m Ns Cm andoc ,
and produces
.Fl T Ns Cm ascii
output.
.Pp
.Ex -std mandoc
.Ss Input Formats
The
.Nm
utility accepts
.Xr mdoc 7
and
.Xr man 7
input with
.Fl m Ns Cm doc
and
.Fl m Ns Cm an ,
respectively.
The
.Xr mdoc 7
format is
.Em strongly
recommended;
.Xr man 7
should only be used for legacy manuals.
.Pp
A third option,
.Fl m Ns Cm andoc ,
which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first
non-comment macro is
.Sq \&Dd
or
.Sq \&Dt ,
the
.Xr mdoc 7
parser is used; otherwise, the
.Xr man 7
parser is used.
.Pp
If multiple
files are specified with
.Fl m Ns Cm andoc ,
each has its file-type determined this way.
If multiple files are
specified and
.Fl m Ns Cm doc
or
.Fl m Ns Cm an
is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
.Ss Compiler Options
Default
.Xr mdoc 7
and
.Xr man 7
compilation behaviour may be overridden with the
.Fl f
flag.
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl f Ns Cm ign-errors
When parsing multiple files, don't halt when one errors out.
Useful with
.Fl T Ns Cm lint
over a large set of manuals passed on the command line.
.It Fl f Ns Cm ign-escape
Ignore invalid escape sequences.
This is the default, but the option can be used to override an earlier
.Fl f Ns Cm strict .
.It Fl f Ns Cm ign-scope
When rewinding the scope of a block macro, forces the compiler to ignore
scope violations.
This can seriously mangle the resulting tree.
.Pq mdoc only
.It Fl f Ns Cm no-ign-escape
Do not ignore invalid escape sequences.
.It Fl f Ns Cm no-ign-macro
Do not ignore unknown macros at the start of input lines.
.It Fl f Ns Cm strict
Implies
.Fl f Ns Cm no-ign-escape
and
.Fl f Ns Cm no-ign-macro .
.El
.Ss Output Formats
The
.Nm
utility accepts the following
.Fl T
arguments, which correspond to output modes:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl T Ns Cm ascii
Produce 7-bit ASCII output, backspace-encoded for bold and underline
styles.
This is the default.
See
.Sx ASCII Output .
.It Fl T Ns Cm html
Produce strict HTML-4.01 output, with a sane default style.
See
.Sx HTML Output .
.It Fl T Ns Cm lint
Parse only: produce no output.
Implies
.Fl W Ns Cm all
and
.Fl f Ns Cm strict .
.It Fl T Ns Cm ps
Produce PostScript output.
See
.Sx PostScript Output .
.It Fl T Ns Cm tree
Produce an indented parse tree.
.It Fl T Ns Cm xhtml
Produce strict XHTML-1.0 output, with a sane default style.
See
.Sx XHTML Output .
.El
.Pp
If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
corresponding filter in-order.
.Ss ASCII Output
Output produced by
.Fl T Ns Cm ascii ,
which is the default, is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
.Xr ascii 7 .
.Pp
Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
underlined character
.Sq c
is rendered as
.Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
where
.Sq \e[bs]
is the back-space character number 8.
Emboldened characters are rendered as
.Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
.Pp
The special characters documented in
.Xr mandoc_char 7
are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
.Pp
Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
exceed this limit.
.Pp
The following
.Fl O
arguments are accepted:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
The output width is set to
.Ar width ,
which will normalise to \(>=60.
.El
.Ss HTML Output
Output produced by
.Fl T Ns Cm html
conforms to HTML-4.01 strict.
.Pp
Font styles and page structure are applied using CSS2.
By default, no font style is applied to any text,
although CSS2 is hard-coded to format
the basic structure of output.
.Pp
The
.Pa example.style.css
file documents the range of styles applied to output and, if used, will
cause rendered documents to appear as they do in
.Fl T Ns Cm ascii .
.Pp
Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF-8.
.Pp
The following
.Fl O
arguments are accepted:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
The string
.Ar fmt ,
for example,
.Ar ../src/%I.html ,
is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
.Sq \&In
macro).
Instances of
.Sq \&%I
are replaced with the include filename.
The default is not to present a
hyperlink.
.It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
The string
.Ar fmt ,
for example,
.Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
.Sq \&Xr
macro).
Instances of
.Sq \&%N
and
.Sq %S
are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
The default is not to
present a hyperlink.
.It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
The file
.Ar style.css
is used for an external style-sheet.
This must be a valid absolute or
relative URI.
.El
.Ss PostScript Output
PostScript
.Qq Adobe-3.0
Level-2 pages may be generated by
.Fl T Ns Cm ps .
Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
family, 11-point.
.Pp
Special characters are rendered as in
.Sx ASCII Output .
.Pp
The following
.Fl O
arguments are accepted:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
The paper size
.Ar name
may be one of
.Ar a3 ,
.Ar a4 ,
.Ar a5 ,
.Ar legal ,
or
.Ar letter .
You may also manually specify dimensions as
.Ar NNxNN ,
width by height in millimetres.
If an unknown value is encountered,
.Ar letter
is used.
.El
.Ss XHTML Output
Output produced by
.Fl T Ns Cm xhtml
conforms to XHTML-1.0 strict.
.Pp
See
.Sx HTML Output
for details; beyond generating XHTML tags instead of HTML tags, these
output modes are identical.
.Sh EXAMPLES
To page manuals to the terminal:
.Pp
.D1 $ mandoc \-Wall,error \-fstrict mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
.D1 $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
.Pp
To produce HTML manuals with
.Ar style.css
as the style-sheet:
.Pp
.D1 $ mandoc \-Thtml -Ostyle=style.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
.Pp
To check over a large set of manuals:
.Pp
.Dl $ mandoc \-Tlint \-fign-errors `find /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]`
.Pp
To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
.Pp
.D1 $ mandoc \-Tps \-Opaper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
.Sh COMPATIBILITY
This section summarises
.Nm
compatibility with
.Xr groff 1 .
Each input and output format is separately noted.
.Ss ASCII Compatibility
.Bl -bullet -compact
.It
The
.Sq \e~
special character doesn't produce expected behaviour in
.Fl T Ns Cm ascii .
.It
The
.Sq \&Bd \-literal
and
.Sq \&Bd \-unfilled
macros of
.Xr mdoc 7
in
.Fl T Ns Cm ascii
are synonyms, as are \-filled and \-ragged.
.It
In
.Xr groff 1 ,
the
.Sq \&Pa
.Xr mdoc 7
macro does not underline when scoped under an
.Sq \&It
in the FILES section.
This behaves correctly in
.Nm .
.It
A list or display following the
.Sq \&Ss
.Xr mdoc 7
macro in
.Fl T Ns Cm ascii
does not assert a prior vertical break, just as it doesn't with
.Sq \&Sh .
.It
The
.Sq \&na
.Xr man 7
macro in
.Fl T Ns Cm ascii
has no effect.
.It
Words aren't hyphenated.
.It
In normal mode (not a literal block), blocks of spaces aren't preserved,
so double spaces following sentence closure are reduced to a single space;
.Xr groff 1
retains spaces.
.It
Sentences are unilaterally monospaced.
.El
.Ss HTML/XHTML Compatibility
.Bl -bullet -compact
.It
The
.Sq \efP
escape will revert the font to the previous
.Sq \ef
escape, not to the last rendered decoration, which is now dictated by
CSS instead of hard-coded.
It also will not span past the current scope,
for the same reason.
Note that in
.Sx ASCII Output
mode, this will work fine.
.It
The
.Xr mdoc 7
.Sq \&Bl \-hang
and
.Sq \&Bl \-tag
list types render similarly (no break following overreached left-hand
side) due to the expressive constraints of HTML.
.It
The
.Xr man 7
.Sq IP
and
.Sq TP
lists render similarly.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr man 7 ,
.Xr mandoc_char 7 ,
.Xr mdoc 7
.Sh AUTHORS
The
.Nm
utility was written by
.An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq kristaps@bsd.lv .
.Sh CAVEATS
The
.Fl T Ns Cm html
and
.Fl T Ns Cm xhtml
CSS2 styling used for
.Fl m Ns Cm doc
input lists does not render properly in older browsers, such as Internet
Explorer 6 and earlier.
.Pp
In
.Fl T Ns Cm html
and
.Fl T Ns Cm xhtml ,
the maximum size of an element attribute is determined by
.Dv BUFSIZ ,
which is usually 1024 bytes.
Be aware of this when setting long link
formats such as
.Fl O Ns Cm style Ns = Ns Ar really/long/link .
.Pp
The
.Fl T Ns Cm html
and
.Fl T Ns Cm xhtml
output modes don't render the
.Sq \es
font size escape documented in
.Xr mdoc 7
and
.Xr man 7 .
.Pp
Nesting elements within next-line element scopes of
.Fl m Ns Cm an ,
such as
.Sq br
within an empty
.Sq B ,
will confuse
.Fl T Ns Cm html
and
.Fl T Ns Cm xhtml
and cause them to forget the formatting of the prior next-line scope.
.Pp
The
.Sq i
macro in
.Fl m Ns Cm an
should italicise all subsequent text if a line argument is not provided.
This behaviour is not implemented.
The
.Sq \(aq
control character is an alias for the standard macro control character
and does not emit a line-break as stipulated in GNU troff.