mandoc.1 (58653B)
- .\" $OpenBSD: mandoc.1,v 1.166 2020/02/15 15:28:01 schwarze Exp $
- .\"
- .\" Copyright (c) 2012, 2014-2021 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
- .\" Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
- .\"
- .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
- .\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
- .\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
- .\"
- .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
- .\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
- .\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
- .\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
- .\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
- .\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
- .\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
- .\"
- .Dd $Mdocdate: August 14 2021 $
- .Dt MANDOC 1
- .Os
- .Sh NAME
- .Nm mandoc
- .Nd format manual pages
- .Sh SYNOPSIS
- .Nm mandoc
- .Op Fl ac
- .Op Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
- .Op Fl K Ar encoding
- .Op Fl mdoc | man
- .Op Fl O Ar options
- .Op Fl T Ar output
- .Op Fl W Ar level
- .Op Ar
- .Sh DESCRIPTION
- The
- .Nm
- utility formats manual pages for display.
- .Pp
- By default,
- .Nm
- reads
- .Xr mdoc 7
- or
- .Xr man 7
- text from stdin and produces
- .Fl T Cm locale
- output.
- .Pp
- The options are as follows:
- .Bl -tag -width Ds
- .It Fl a
- If the standard output is a terminal device and
- .Fl c
- is not specified, use
- .Xr less 1
- to paginate the output, just like
- .Xr man 1
- would.
- .It Fl c
- Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
- .Xr less 1
- to paginate them.
- This is the default.
- It can be specified to override
- .Fl a .
- .It Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
- Override the default operating system
- .Ar name
- for the
- .Xr mdoc 7
- .Ic \&Os
- and for the
- .Xr man 7
- .Ic \&TH
- macro.
- .It Fl K Ar encoding
- Specify the input encoding.
- The supported
- .Ar encoding
- arguments are
- .Cm us-ascii ,
- .Cm iso-8859-1 ,
- and
- .Cm utf-8 .
- If not specified, autodetection uses the first match in the following
- list:
- .Bl -enum
- .It
- If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order
- mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as
- .Cm utf-8 .
- .It
- If the first or second line of the input file matches the
- .Sy emacs
- mode line format
- .Pp
- .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
- .Pp
- then input is interpreted according to
- .Ar encoding .
- .It
- If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8
- sequence, input is interpreted as
- .Cm utf-8 .
- .It
- Otherwise, input is interpreted as
- .Cm iso-8859-1 .
- .El
- .It Fl mdoc | man
- With
- .Fl mdoc ,
- all input files are interpreted as
- .Xr mdoc 7 .
- With
- .Fl man ,
- all input files are interpreted as
- .Xr man 7 .
- By default, the input language is automatically detected for each file:
- if the first macro is
- .Ic \&Dd
- or
- .Ic \&Dt ,
- the
- .Xr mdoc 7
- parser is used; otherwise, the
- .Xr man 7
- parser is used.
- With other arguments,
- .Fl m
- is silently ignored.
- .It Fl O Ar options
- Comma-separated output options.
- See the descriptions of the individual output formats for supported
- .Ar options .
- .It Fl T Ar output
- Select the output format.
- Supported values for the
- .Ar output
- argument are
- .Cm ascii ,
- .Cm html ,
- the default of
- .Cm locale ,
- .Cm man ,
- .Cm markdown ,
- .Cm pdf ,
- .Cm ps ,
- .Cm tree ,
- and
- .Cm utf8 .
- .Pp
- The special
- .Fl T Cm lint
- mode only parses the input and produces no output.
- It implies
- .Fl W Cm all
- and redirects parser messages, which usually appear on standard
- error output, to standard output.
- .It Fl W Ar level
- Specify the minimum message
- .Ar level
- to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
- The
- .Ar level
- can be
- .Cm base ,
- .Cm style ,
- .Cm warning ,
- .Cm error ,
- or
- .Cm unsupp .
- The
- .Cm base
- level automatically derives the operating system from the contents of the
- .Ic \&Os
- macro, from the
- .Fl Ios
- command line option, or from the
- .Xr uname 3
- return value.
- The levels
- .Cm openbsd
- and
- .Cm netbsd
- are variants of
- .Cm base
- that bypass autodetection and request validation of base system
- conventions for a particular operating system.
- The level
- .Cm all
- is an alias for
- .Cm base .
- By default,
- .Nm
- is silent.
- See
- .Sx EXIT STATUS
- and
- .Sx DIAGNOSTICS
- for details.
- .Pp
- The special option
- .Fl W Cm stop
- tells
- .Nm
- to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
- the requested level.
- No formatted output will be produced from that file.
- If both a
- .Ar level
- and
- .Cm stop
- are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
- .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
- .It Ar file
- Read from the given input file.
- If multiple files are specified, they are processed in the given order.
- If unspecified,
- .Nm
- reads from standard input.
- .El
- .Pp
- The options
- .Fl fhklw
- are also supported and are documented in
- .Xr man 1 .
- In
- .Fl f
- and
- .Fl k
- mode,
- .Nm
- also supports the options
- .Fl CMmOSs
- described in the
- .Xr apropos 1
- manual.
- The options
- .Fl fkl
- are mutually exclusive and override each other.
- .Ss ASCII Output
- Use
- .Fl T Cm ascii
- to force text output in 7-bit ASCII character encoding documented in the
- .Xr ascii 7
- manual page, ignoring the
- .Xr locale 1
- set in the environment.
- .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 .
- This markup is typically converted to appropriate terminal sequences by
- the pager or
- .Xr ul 1 .
- To remove the markup, pipe the output to
- .Xr col 1
- .Fl b
- instead.
- .Pp
- The special characters documented in
- .Xr mandoc_char 7
- are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
- In particular, opening and closing
- .Sq single quotes
- are represented as characters number 0x60 and 0x27, respectively,
- which agrees with all ASCII standards from 1965 to the latest
- revision (2012) and which matches the traditional way in which
- .Xr roff 7
- formatters represent single quotes in ASCII output.
- This correct ASCII rendering may look strange with modern
- Unicode-compatible fonts because contrary to ASCII, Unicode uses
- the code point U+0060 for the grave accent only, never for an opening
- quote.
- .Pp
- The following
- .Fl O
- arguments are accepted:
- .Bl -tag -width Ds
- .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
- The left margin for normal text is set to
- .Ar indent
- blank characters instead of the default of five for
- .Xr mdoc 7
- and seven for
- .Xr man 7 .
- Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
- for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
- When output is to a pager on a terminal that is less than 66 columns
- wide, the default is reduced to three columns.
- .It Cm mdoc
- Format
- .Xr man 7
- input files in
- .Xr mdoc 7
- output style.
- This prints the operating system name rather than the page title
- on the right side of the footer line, and it implies
- .Fl O Cm indent Ns =5 .
- One useful application is for checking that
- .Fl T Cm man
- output formats in the same way as the
- .Xr mdoc 7
- source it was generated from.
- .It Cm tag Ns Op = Ns Ar term
- If the formatted manual page is opened in a pager,
- go to the definition of the
- .Ar term
- rather than showing the manual page from the beginning.
- If no
- .Ar term
- is specified, reuse the first command line argument that is not a
- .Ar section
- number.
- If that argument is in
- .Xr apropos 1
- .Ar key Ns = Ns Ar val
- format, only the
- .Ar val
- is used rather than the argument as a whole.
- This is useful for commands like
- .Ql man -akO tag Ic=ulimit
- to search for a keyword and jump right to its definition
- in the matching manual pages.
- .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
- The output width is set to
- .Ar width
- instead of the default of 78.
- When output is to a pager on a terminal that is less than 79 columns
- wide, the default is reduced to one less than the terminal width.
- In any case, lines that are output in literal mode are never wrapped
- and may exceed the output width.
- .El
- .Ss HTML Output
- Output produced by
- .Fl T Cm html
- conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
- Default styles use only CSS1.
- Equations rendered from
- .Xr eqn 7
- blocks use MathML.
- .Pp
- The file
- .Pa /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css
- documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
- If a style-sheet is not specified with
- .Fl O Cm style ,
- .Fl T Cm html
- defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
- readable in any graphical or text-based web
- browser.
- .Pp
- Non-ASCII characters are rendered
- as hexadecimal Unicode character references.
- .Pp
- The following
- .Fl O
- arguments are accepted:
- .Bl -tag -width Ds
- .It Cm fragment
- Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
- elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
- The
- .Cm style
- argument will be ignored.
- This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
- .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
- .Ic \&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 Ns Op ; 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
- .Ic \&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.
- If two formats are given and a file
- .Ar %N.%S
- exists in the current directory, the first format is used;
- otherwise, the second format is used.
- .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.
- .It Cm tag Ns Op = Ns Ar term
- Same syntax and semantics as for
- .Sx ASCII Output .
- This is implemented by passing a
- .Ic file://
- URI ending in a fragment identifier to the pager
- rather than passing merely a file name.
- When using this argument, use a pager supporting such URIs, for example
- .Bd -literal -offset 3n
- MANPAGER='lynx -force_html' man -T html -O tag=MANPAGER man
- MANPAGER='w3m -T text/html' man -T html -O tag=toc mandoc
- .Ed
- .Pp
- Consequently, for HTML output, this argument does not work with
- .Xr more 1
- or
- .Xr less 1 .
- For example,
- .Ql MANPAGER=less man -T html -O tag=toc mandoc
- does not work because
- .Xr less 1
- does not support
- .Ic file://
- URIs.
- .It Cm toc
- If an input file contains at least two non-standard sections,
- print a table of contents near the beginning of the output.
- .El
- .Ss Locale Output
- By default,
- .Nm
- automatically selects UTF-8 or ASCII output according to the current
- .Xr locale 1 .
- If any of the environment variables
- .Ev LC_ALL ,
- .Ev LC_CTYPE ,
- or
- .Ev LANG
- are set and the first one that is set
- selects the UTF-8 character encoding, it produces
- .Sx UTF-8 Output ;
- otherwise, it falls back to
- .Sx ASCII Output .
- This output mode can also be selected explicitly with
- .Fl T Cm locale .
- .Ss Man Output
- Use
- .Fl T Cm man
- to translate
- .Xr mdoc 7
- input into
- .Xr man 7
- output format.
- This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
- lacking
- .Xr mdoc 7
- formatters.
- Embedded
- .Xr eqn 7
- and
- .Xr tbl 7
- code is not supported.
- .Pp
- If the input format of a file is
- .Xr man 7 ,
- the input is copied to the output.
- The parser is also run, and as usual, the
- .Fl W
- level controls which
- .Sx DIAGNOSTICS
- are displayed before copying the input to the output.
- .Ss Markdown Output
- Use
- .Fl T Cm markdown
- to translate
- .Xr mdoc 7
- input to the markdown format conforming to
- .Lk http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text\
- "John Gruber's 2004 specification" .
- The output also almost conforms to the
- .Lk http://commonmark.org/ CommonMark
- specification.
- .Pp
- The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.
- Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities.
- Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these
- are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output,
- non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in
- these contexts.
- .Pp
- Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
- lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost.
- Do not use this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML;
- instead, use
- .Fl T Cm html
- directly.
- .Pp
- The
- .Xr man 7 ,
- .Xr tbl 7 ,
- and
- .Xr eqn 7
- input languages are not supported by
- .Fl T Cm markdown
- output mode.
- .Ss PDF Output
- PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
- .Fl T Cm pdf .
- See
- .Sx PostScript Output
- for
- .Fl O
- arguments and defaults.
- .Ss PostScript Output
- PostScript
- .Qq Adobe-3.0
- Level-2 pages may be generated by
- .Fl T Cm ps .
- Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
- family, 11-point.
- Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
- Line-height is 1.4m.
- .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 UTF-8 Output
- Use
- .Fl T Cm utf8
- to force text output in UTF-8 multi-byte character encoding,
- ignoring the
- .Xr locale 1
- settings in the environment.
- See
- .Sx ASCII Output
- regarding font styles and
- .Fl O
- arguments.
- .Pp
- On operating systems lacking locale or wide character support, and
- on those where the internal character representation is not UCS-4,
- .Nm
- always falls back to
- .Sx ASCII Output .
- .Ss Syntax tree output
- Use
- .Fl T Cm tree
- to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
- It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
- The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
- .Pp
- The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
- .Xr mdoc 7
- prologue, on the
- .Xr man 7
- .Ic \&TH
- line, or the fallbacks used.
- .Pp
- In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.
- Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
- The columns are:
- .Pp
- .Bl -enum -compact
- .It
- For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
- .Xr tbl 7
- nodes, the content.
- There is a special format for
- .Xr eqn 7
- nodes.
- .It
- Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
- .It
- Flags:
- .Bl -dash -compact
- .It
- An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
- .It
- An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
- .It
- The input line number (starting at one).
- .It
- A colon.
- .It
- The input column number (starting at one).
- .It
- A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
- .It
- A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
- .It
- BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
- .It
- NOSRC if the node is not in the input file,
- but automatically generated from macros.
- .It
- NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output
- for any output format.
- .El
- .El
- .Pp
- The following
- .Fl O
- argument is accepted:
- .Bl -tag -width Ds
- .It Cm noval
- Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.
- This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by
- the parser or by the validator.
- Meta data is not available in this case.
- .El
- .Sh ENVIRONMENT
- .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
- .It Ev LC_CTYPE
- The character encoding
- .Xr locale 1 .
- When
- .Sx Locale Output
- is selected, it decides whether to use ASCII or UTF-8 output format.
- It never affects the interpretation of input files.
- .It Ev MANPAGER
- Any non-empty value of the environment variable
- .Ev MANPAGER
- is used instead of the standard pagination program,
- .Xr less 1 ;
- see
- .Xr man 1
- for details.
- Only used if
- .Fl a
- or
- .Fl l
- is specified.
- .It Ev PAGER
- Specifies the pagination program to use when
- .Ev MANPAGER
- is not defined.
- If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
- .Xr less 1
- is used.
- Only used if
- .Fl a
- or
- .Fl l
- is specified.
- .El
- .Sh EXIT STATUS
- The
- .Nm
- utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
- .Ar level
- associated with the
- .Fl W
- option:
- .Pp
- .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
- .It 0
- No base system convention violations, style suggestions, warnings,
- or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because they
- were lower than the requested
- .Ar level .
- .It 1
- At least one base system convention violation or style suggestion
- occurred, but no warning or error, and
- .Fl W Cm base
- or
- .Fl W Cm style
- was specified.
- .It 2
- At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
- .Fl W Cm warning
- or a lower
- .Ar level
- was requested.
- .It 3
- At least one parsing error occurred,
- but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
- .Fl W Cm error
- or a lower
- .Ar level
- was requested.
- .It 4
- At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
- .Fl W Cm unsupp
- or a lower
- .Ar level
- was requested.
- .It 5
- Invalid command line arguments were specified.
- No input files have been read.
- .It 6
- An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
- of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
- Such errors may cause
- .Nm
- to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
- .El
- .Pp
- Note that selecting
- .Fl T Cm lint
- output mode implies
- .Fl W Cm all .
- .Sh EXAMPLES
- To page manuals to the terminal:
- .Pp
- .Dl $ mandoc -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1 makewhatis.8
- .Pp
- To produce HTML manuals with
- .Pa /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css
- as the style-sheet:
- .Pp
- .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=/usr/share/misc/mandoc.css mdoc.7 > mdoc.7.html
- .Pp
- To check over a large set of manuals:
- .Pp
- .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
- .Pp
- To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
- .Pp
- .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 > manuals.ps
- .Pp
- Convert a modern
- .Xr mdoc 7
- manual to the older
- .Xr man 7
- format, for use on systems lacking an
- .Xr mdoc 7
- parser:
- .Pp
- .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc > foo.man
- .Sh DIAGNOSTICS
- Messages displayed by
- .Nm
- follow this format:
- .Bd -ragged -offset indent
- .Nm :
- .Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro arguments
- .Pq Ar os
- .Ed
- .Pp
- The first three fields identify the
- .Ar file
- name,
- .Ar line
- number, and
- .Ar column
- number of the input file where the message was triggered.
- The line and column numbers start at 1.
- Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
- All
- .Ar level
- and
- .Ar message
- strings are explained below.
- The name of the
- .Ar macro
- triggering the message and its
- .Ar arguments
- are omitted where meaningless.
- The
- .Ar os
- operating system specifier is omitted for messages that are relevant
- for all operating systems.
- Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
- or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
- may also omit the
- .Ar file
- and
- .Ar level
- fields.
- .Pp
- Message levels have the following meanings:
- .Bl -tag -width "warning"
- .It Cm syserr
- An operating system error occurred.
- There isn't necessarily anything wrong with the input files.
- Output may all the same be missing or incomplete.
- .It Cm badarg
- Invalid command line arguments were specified.
- No input files have been read and no output is produced.
- .It Cm unsupp
- An input file uses unsupported low-level
- .Xr roff 7
- features.
- The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
- so using GNU troff instead of
- .Nm
- to process the file may be preferable.
- .It Cm error
- Indicates a risk of information loss or severe misformatting,
- in most cases caused by serious syntax errors.
- .It Cm warning
- Indicates a risk that the information shown or its formatting
- may mismatch the author's intent in minor ways.
- Additionally, syntax errors are classified at least as warnings,
- even if they do not usually cause misformatting.
- .It Cm style
- An input file uses dubious or discouraged style.
- This is not a complaint about the syntax, and probably neither
- formatting nor portability are in danger.
- While great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher
- message levels, the
- .Cm style
- level tries to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed,
- so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions.
- Please use your good judgement to decide whether any particular
- .Cm style
- suggestion really justifies a change to the input file.
- .It Cm base
- A convention used in the base system of a specific operating system
- is not adhered to.
- These are not markup mistakes, and neither the quality of formatting
- nor portability are in danger.
- Messages of the
- .Cm base
- level are printed with the more intuitive
- .Cm style
- .Ar level
- tag.
- .El
- .Pp
- Messages of the
- .Cm base ,
- .Cm style ,
- .Cm warning ,
- .Cm error ,
- and
- .Cm unsupp
- levels are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
- .Fl W
- option or
- .Fl T Cm lint
- output mode.
- .Pp
- As indicated below, all
- .Cm base
- and some
- .Cm style
- checks are only performed if a specific operating system name occurs
- in the arguments of the
- .Fl W
- command line option, of the
- .Ic \&Os
- macro, of the
- .Fl Ios
- command line option, or, if neither are present, in the return value
- of the
- .Xr uname 3
- function.
- .Ss Conventions for base system manuals
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "Mdocdate found"
- .Pq mdoc , Nx
- The
- .Ic \&Dd
- macro uses CVS
- .Ic Mdocdate
- keyword substitution, which is not supported by the
- .Nx
- base system.
- Consider using the conventional
- .Dq "Month dd, yyyy"
- format instead.
- .It Sy "Mdocdate missing"
- .Pq mdoc , Ox
- The
- .Ic \&Dd
- macro does not use CVS
- .Ic Mdocdate
- keyword substitution, but using it is conventionally expected in the
- .Ox
- base system.
- .It Sy "unknown architecture"
- .Pq mdoc , Ox , Nx
- The third argument of the
- .Ic \&Dt
- macro does not match any of the architectures this operating system
- is running on.
- .It Sy "operating system explicitly specified"
- .Pq mdoc , Ox , Nx
- The
- .Ic \&Os
- macro has an argument.
- In the base system, it is conventionally left blank.
- .It Sy "RCS id missing"
- .Pq Ox , Nx
- The manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier
- generated by CVS
- .Ic OpenBSD
- or
- .Ic NetBSD
- keyword substitution as conventionally used in these operating systems.
- .El
- .Ss Style suggestions
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "legacy man(7) date format"
- .Pq mdoc
- The
- .Ic \&Dd
- macro uses the legacy
- .Xr man 7
- date format
- .Dq yyyy-dd-mm .
- Consider using the conventional
- .Xr mdoc 7
- date format
- .Dq "Month dd, yyyy"
- instead.
- .It Sy "normalizing date format to" : No ...
- .Pq mdoc , man
- The
- .Ic \&Dd
- or
- .Ic \&TH
- macro provides an abbreviated month name or a day number with a
- leading zero.
- In the formatted output, the month name is written out in full
- and the leading zero is omitted.
- .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- The title is still used as given in the
- .Ic \&Dt
- or
- .Ic \&TH
- macro.
- .It Sy "duplicate RCS id"
- A single manual page contains two copies of the RCS identifier for
- the same operating system.
- Consider deleting the later instance and moving the first one up
- to the top of the page.
- .It Sy "possible typo in section name"
- .Pq mdoc
- Fuzzy string matching revealed that the argument of an
- .Ic \&Sh
- macro is similar, but not identical to a standard section name.
- .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
- .Pq roff
- Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
- such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
- argument need not be escaped.
- The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
- However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
- harder to read.
- .It Sy "useless macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bt ,
- .Ic \&Tn ,
- or
- .Ic \&Ud
- macro was found.
- Simply delete it: it serves no useful purpose.
- .It Sy "consider using OS macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- A string was found in plain text or in a
- .Ic \&Bx
- macro that could be represented using
- .Ic \&Ox ,
- .Ic \&Nx ,
- .Ic \&Fx ,
- or
- .Ic \&Dx .
- .It Sy "errnos out of order"
- .Pq mdoc, Nx
- The
- .Ic \&Er
- items in a
- .Ic \&Bl
- list are not in alphabetical order.
- .It Sy "duplicate errno"
- .Pq mdoc, Nx
- A
- .Ic \&Bl
- list contains two consecutive
- .Ic \&It
- entries describing the same
- .Ic \&Er
- number.
- .It Sy "referenced manual not found"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&Xr
- macro references a manual page that was not found.
- When running with
- .Fl W Cm base ,
- the search is restricted to the base system, by default to
- .Pa /usr/share/man : Ns Pa /usr/X11R6/man .
- This path can be configured at compile time using the
- .Dv MANPATH_BASE
- preprocessor macro.
- When running with
- .Fl W Cm style ,
- the search is done along the full search path as described in the
- .Xr man 1
- manual page, respecting the
- .Fl m
- and
- .Fl M
- command line options, the
- .Ev MANPATH
- environment variable, the
- .Xr man.conf 5
- file and falling back to the default of
- .Pa /usr/share/man : Ns Pa /usr/X11R6/man : Ns Pa /usr/local/man ,
- also configurable at compile time using the
- .Dv MANPATH_DEFAULT
- preprocessor macro.
- .It Sy "trailing delimiter"
- .Pq mdoc
- The last argument of an
- .Ic \&Ex , \&Fo , \&Nd , \&Nm , \&Os , \&Sh , \&Ss , \&St ,
- or
- .Ic \&Sx
- macro ends with a trailing delimiter.
- This is usually bad style and often indicates typos.
- Most likely, the delimiter can be removed.
- .It Sy "no blank before trailing delimiter"
- .Pq mdoc
- The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter
- arguments is longer than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter.
- Consider inserting a blank such that the delimiter becomes a separate
- argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.
- .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
- .Pq man
- A
- .Ic \&fi
- request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
- or already switched back to fill mode.
- It has no effect.
- .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
- .Pq man
- An
- .Ic \&nf
- request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
- and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
- It has no effect.
- .It Sy "input text line longer than 80 bytes"
- Consider breaking the input text line
- at one of the blank characters before column 80.
- .It Sy "verbatim \(dq--\(dq, maybe consider using \e(em"
- .Pq mdoc
- Even though the ASCII output device renders an em-dash as
- .Qq \-\- ,
- that is not a good way to write it in an input file
- because it renders poorly on all other output devices.
- .It Sy "function name without markup"
- .Pq mdoc
- A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text line.
- Consider using an
- .Ic \&Fn
- or
- .Ic \&Xr
- macro.
- .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
- .Pq mdoc , man , roff
- Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
- significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
- extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
- .It Sy "bad comment style"
- .Pq roff
- Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
- The
- .Nm
- utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
- but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
- .El
- .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Dt
- macro has no arguments, or there is no
- .Ic \&Dt
- macro before the first non-prologue macro.
- .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq man
- There is no
- .Ic \&TH
- macro, or it has no arguments.
- .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- A
- .Ic \&Dt
- or
- .Ic \&TH
- macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
- .It Sy "unknown manual section"
- .Pq mdoc
- The section number in a
- .Ic \&Dt
- line is invalid, but still used.
- .It Sy "filename/section mismatch"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- The name of the input file being processed is known and its file
- name extension starts with a non-zero digit, but the
- .Ic \&Dt
- or
- .Ic \&TH
- macro contains a
- .Ar section
- argument that starts with a different non-zero digit.
- The
- .Ar section
- argument is used as provided anyway.
- Consider checking whether the file name or the argument need a correction.
- .It Sy "missing date, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq mdoc, man
- The document was parsed as
- .Xr mdoc 7
- and it has no
- .Ic \&Dd
- macro, or the
- .Ic \&Dd
- macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
- or the document was parsed as
- .Xr man 7
- and it has no
- .Ic \&TH
- macro, or the
- .Ic \&TH
- macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
- .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- The date given in a
- .Ic \&Dd
- or
- .Ic \&TH
- macro does not follow the conventional format.
- .It Sy "date in the future, using it anyway"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- The date given in a
- .Ic \&Dd
- or
- .Ic \&TH
- macro is more than a day ahead of the current system
- .Xr time 3 .
- .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq mdoc
- The default or current system is not shown in this case.
- .It Sy "late prologue macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Dd
- or
- .Ic \&Os
- macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
- .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
- .Pq mdoc
- The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
- .Ic \&Dd ,
- .Ic \&Dt ,
- .Ic \&Os .
- All three macros are used even when given in another order.
- .El
- .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
- .Pq roff
- Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
- current working directory.
- .It Sy "no document body"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- The document body contains neither text nor macros.
- An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
- .It Sy "content before first section header"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- Some macros or text precede the first
- .Ic \&Sh
- or
- .Ic \&SH
- section header.
- The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
- of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
- .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
- .Pq mdoc
- The argument of the first
- .Ic \&Sh
- macro is not
- .Sq NAME .
- This may confuse
- .Xr makewhatis 8
- and
- .Xr apropos 1 .
- .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
- .Pq mdoc
- The NAME section does not contain any
- .Ic \&Nm
- child macro before the first
- .Ic \&Nd
- macro.
- .It Sy "NAME section without description"
- .Pq mdoc
- The NAME section lacks the mandatory
- .Ic \&Nd
- child macro.
- .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
- .Pq mdoc
- The NAME section does contain an
- .Ic \&Nd
- child macro, but other content follows it.
- .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
- .Pq mdoc
- The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
- .Ic \&Nm
- and
- .Ic \&Nd .
- .It Sy "missing comma before name"
- .Pq mdoc
- The NAME section contains an
- .Ic \&Nm
- macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
- .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq mdoc
- The
- .Ic \&Nd
- macro lacks the required argument.
- The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
- .It Sy "description line outside NAME section"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&Nd
- macro appears outside the NAME section.
- The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for
- .Xr apropos 1 ,
- but none of that behaviour is portable.
- .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
- .Pq mdoc
- A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
- All section titles are used as given,
- and the order of sections is not changed.
- .It Sy "duplicate section title"
- .Pq mdoc
- The same standard section title occurs more than once.
- .It Sy "unexpected section"
- .Pq mdoc
- A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
- where it normally isn't useful.
- .It Sy "cross reference to self"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&Xr
- macro refers to a name and section matching the section of the present
- manual page and a name mentioned in an
- .Ic \&Nm
- macro in the NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or in an
- .Ic \&Fn
- or
- .Ic \&Fo
- macro in the SYNOPSIS.
- Consider using
- .Ic \&Nm
- or
- .Ic \&Fn
- instead of
- .Ic \&Xr .
- .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
- .Pq mdoc
- In the SEE ALSO section, an
- .Ic \&Xr
- macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
- or two
- .Ic \&Xr
- macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
- .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
- .Pq mdoc
- In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
- .Ic \&Xr
- macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
- after the last
- .Ic \&Xr
- macro.
- .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- An AUTHORS sections contains no
- .Ic \&An
- macros, or only empty ones.
- Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
- .El
- .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "obsolete macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- See the
- .Xr mdoc 7
- manual for replacements.
- .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
- .Pq mdoc
- The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
- It is printed verbatim.
- If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
- otherwise, escape it by prepending
- .Sq \e& .
- .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
- In
- .Xr mdoc 7
- documents, this happens
- .Bl -dash -compact
- .It
- at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
- .It
- right before non-compact lists and displays
- .It
- at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
- .It
- and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
- .El
- In
- .Xr man 7
- documents, it happens
- .Bl -dash -compact
- .It
- for empty
- .Ic \&P ,
- .Ic \&PP ,
- and
- .Ic \&LP
- macros
- .It
- for
- .Ic \&IP
- macros having neither head nor body arguments
- .It
- for
- .Ic \&br
- or
- .Ic \&sp
- right after
- .Ic \&SH
- or
- .Ic \&SS
- .El
- .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
- .Pq mdoc
- A list item in a
- .Ic \&Bl
- list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
- The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
- .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- An input line begins with an
- .Ic \&Ns
- macro, or the next argument after an
- .Ic \&Ns
- macro is an isolated closing delimiter.
- The macro is ignored.
- .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
- .Pq mdoc
- If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
- Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
- format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
- outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
- blocks at all.
- Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
- .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
- and
- .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
- In these examples,
- .Ic \&Ac
- breaks
- .Ic \&Bo
- and
- .Ic \&Bq ,
- respectively.
- .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bd ,
- .Ic \&D1 ,
- or
- .Ic \&Dl
- display occurs nested inside another
- .Ic \&Bd
- display.
- This works with
- .Nm ,
- but fails with most other implementations.
- .It Sy "moving content out of list"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bl
- list block contains text or macros before the first
- .Ic \&It
- macro.
- The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
- .It Sy "first macro on line"
- Inside a
- .Ic \&Bl Fl column
- list, a
- .Ic \&Ta
- macro occurs as the first macro on a line, which is not portable.
- .It Sy "line scope broken"
- .Pq man
- While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
- another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
- The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
- .El
- .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "skipping empty request"
- .Pq roff , eqn
- The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
- or an
- .Xr eqn 7
- control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
- .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
- .Pq roff
- A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
- follows it on the same logical input line:
- .Bl -dash -compact
- .It
- The
- .Sq \e{
- keyword to open a multi-line scope.
- .It
- A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
- .It
- The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
- resulting in next-line scope.
- .El
- Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
- and there is no other content on its logical input line.
- Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
- across multiple physical input lines using
- .Sq \e
- line continuation characters.
- This is one of the rare cases
- where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
- The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
- so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
- except that it may control a following
- .Ic \&el
- clause.
- .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
- .It Sy "empty block"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- A
- .Ic \&Bd ,
- .Ic \&Bk ,
- .Ic \&Bl ,
- .Ic \&D1 ,
- .Ic \&Dl ,
- .Ic \&MT ,
- .Ic \&RS ,
- or
- .Ic \&UR
- block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
- .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
- .Pq mdoc
- The required width is missing after
- .Ic \&Bd
- or
- .Ic \&Bl
- .Fl offset
- or
- .Fl width .
- .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
- .Pq mdoc
- The
- .Ic \&Bd
- macro is invoked without the required display type.
- .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
- .Pq mdoc
- In a
- .Ic \&Bl
- macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
- The
- .Nm
- utility copes with any argument order, but some other
- .Xr mdoc 7
- implementations do not.
- .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
- .Pq mdoc
- Every
- .Ic \&Bl
- macro having the
- .Fl tag
- argument requires
- .Fl width ,
- too.
- .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq mdoc
- The
- .Ic \&Ex Fl std
- macro is called without an argument before
- .Ic \&Nm
- has first been called with an argument.
- .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq mdoc
- The
- .Ic \&Fo
- macro is called without an argument.
- No function name is printed.
- .It Sy "empty head in list item"
- .Pq mdoc
- In a
- .Ic \&Bl
- .Fl diag ,
- .Fl hang ,
- .Fl inset ,
- .Fl ohang ,
- or
- .Fl tag
- list, an
- .Ic \&It
- macro lacks the required argument.
- The item head is left empty.
- .It Sy "empty list item"
- .Pq mdoc
- In a
- .Ic \&Bl
- .Fl bullet ,
- .Fl dash ,
- .Fl enum ,
- or
- .Fl hyphen
- list, an
- .Ic \&It
- block is empty.
- An empty list item is shown.
- .It Sy "missing argument, using next line"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&It
- macro in a
- .Ic \&Bd Fl column
- list has no arguments.
- While
- .Nm
- uses the text or macros of the following line, if any, for the cell,
- other formatters may misformat the list.
- .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bf
- macro has no argument.
- It switches to the default font.
- .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
- .Pq mdoc
- The
- .Ic \&Bf
- argument is invalid.
- The default font is used instead.
- .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Pf
- macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
- on the same input line.
- This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
- before the text or macros following on the next input line.
- .It Sy "empty reference block"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&Rs
- macro is immediately followed by an
- .Ic \&Re
- macro on the next input line.
- Such an empty block does not produce any output.
- .It Sy "missing section argument"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&Xr
- macro lacks its second, section number argument.
- The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
- parentheses.
- .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&Ex
- or
- .Ic \&Rv
- macro lacks the required
- .Fl std
- argument.
- The
- .Nm
- utility assumes
- .Fl std
- even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
- .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq man
- The
- .Ic \&OP
- macro is invoked without any argument.
- An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
- .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq man
- The
- .Ic \&MT
- or
- .Ic \&UR
- macro is invoked without any argument.
- An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
- .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq eqn
- A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
- but there is nothing to the left of it.
- An empty box is inserted.
- .El
- .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "duplicate argument"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bd
- or
- .Ic \&Bl
- macro has more than one
- .Fl compact ,
- more than one
- .Fl offset ,
- or more than one
- .Fl width
- argument.
- All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
- .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&An
- macro has more than one
- .Fl split
- or
- .Fl nosplit
- argument.
- All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
- .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bd
- macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
- .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bl
- macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
- .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bl
- .Fl column ,
- .Fl diag ,
- .Fl ohang ,
- .Fl inset ,
- or
- .Fl item
- list has a
- .Fl width
- argument.
- That has no effect.
- .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
- In a line of a
- .Ic \&Bl Fl column
- list, the number of tabs or
- .Ic \&Ta
- macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
- or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
- Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
- columns are joined into one single cell.
- .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&At
- macro has an invalid argument.
- It is used verbatim, with
- .Qq "AT&T UNIX "
- prefixed to it.
- .It Sy "comma in function argument"
- .Pq mdoc
- An argument of an
- .Ic \&Fa
- or
- .Ic \&Fn
- macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
- .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
- .Pq mdoc
- The first argument of an
- .Ic \&Fc
- or
- .Ic \&Fn
- macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
- parentheses are added automatically.
- .It Sy "unknown library name"
- .Pq mdoc, not on Ox
- An
- .Ic \&Lb
- macro has an unknown name argument and will be rendered as
- .Qq library Dq Ar name .
- .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&Rs
- block contains plain text or non-% macros.
- The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
- Formatting may be poor.
- .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&Sm
- macro has an argument other than
- .Cm on
- or
- .Cm off .
- The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
- empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
- .It Sy "argument contains two font escapes"
- .Pq roff
- The second argument of a
- .Ic char
- request contains more than one font escape sequence.
- A wrong font may remain active after using the character.
- .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
- .Pq man , tbl
- A
- .Xr roff 7
- .Ic \&ft
- request or a
- .Xr tbl 7
- .Ic \&f
- layout modifier has an unknown
- .Ar font
- argument.
- .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
- .Pq roff
- A
- .Ic \&tr
- request contains an odd number of characters.
- The last character is mapped to the blank character.
- .El
- .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
- .Pq mdoc
- The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
- In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
- significant.
- However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
- are formatted like
- .Ic \&sp
- requests.
- To request a paragraph break, use
- .Ic \&Pp
- instead of a blank line.
- .It Sy "tab in filled text"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
- In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
- on text input lines.
- As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
- are passed through to the formatters in any case.
- Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
- it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
- .It Sy "new sentence, new line"
- .Pq mdoc
- A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.
- Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
- .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
- .Pq roff
- An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
- closing argument delimiter, the argument is of an invalid form, or it is
- a character escape sequence with an invalid name.
- If the argument is incomplete,
- .Ic \e*
- and
- .Ic \en
- expand to an empty string,
- .Ic \eB
- to the digit
- .Sq 0 ,
- and
- .Ic \ew
- to the length of the incomplete argument.
- All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
- .It Sy "undefined escape, printing literally"
- .Pq roff
- In an escape sequence, the first character
- right after the leading backslash is invalid.
- That character is printed literally,
- which is equivalent to ignoring the backslash.
- .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq roff
- If a string is used without being defined before,
- its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
- However, defining strings explicitly before use
- keeps the code more readable.
- .El
- .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
- .Pq tbl
- The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
- .Pq Sq Cm s .
- Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
- .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
- .Pq tbl
- The first line of a table layout specification
- requests a vertical span
- .Pq Sq Cm ^ .
- Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
- .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
- .Pq tbl
- A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
- A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
- .El
- .Ss "Errors related to tables"
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
- .Pq tbl
- The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
- blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
- The character is ignored.
- .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
- .Pq tbl
- The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
- match any known option name.
- The word is ignored.
- .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
- .Pq tbl
- A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
- opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
- followed by a closing parenthesis.
- The option is ignored.
- .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
- .Pq tbl
- A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
- Both the option and the argument are ignored.
- .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
- .Pq tbl
- A table layout specification is completely empty,
- specifying zero lines and zero columns.
- As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
- .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
- .Pq tbl
- A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
- be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
- or a modifier precedes the first key.
- The invalid character is discarded.
- .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
- .Pq tbl
- A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
- but no matching closing parenthesis.
- The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
- .It Sy "ignoring excessive spacing in tbl layout"
- .Pq tbl
- A spacing modifier in a table layout is unreasonably large.
- The default spacing of 3n is used instead.
- .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
- .Pq tbl
- A table does not contain any data cells.
- It will probably produce no output.
- .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
- .Pq tbl
- A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
- .Pq Sq Cm s
- or vertical span
- .Pq Sq Cm ^
- in the table layout, but it contains data.
- The data is ignored.
- .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
- .Pq tbl
- A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
- The data in the extra cells is ignored.
- .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
- .Pq tbl
- A data block is opened with
- .Cm T{ ,
- but never closed with a matching
- .Cm T} .
- The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
- and any remaining cells stay empty.
- .El
- .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
- The last instance overrides all previous ones.
- .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
- .Pq mdoc
- The
- .Ic \&Dt
- macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
- Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
- they write the page header before parsing the document body.
- Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
- .Nm ,
- traditional semantics is preserved.
- The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
- .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
- .Pq roff
- Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
- in order to prevent infinite loops:
- .Bl -dash -compact
- .It
- expansion of nested escape sequences
- including expansion of strings and number registers,
- .It
- expansion of nested user-defined macros,
- .It
- and
- .Ic \&so
- file inclusion.
- .El
- When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
- some content, but the parser can continue.
- .It Sy "skipping bad character"
- .Pq mdoc , man , roff
- The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
- .Xr ascii 7
- character.
- The message mentions the character number.
- The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
- .Pq Sq \&? .
- Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
- transliteration of the intended character.
- .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
- .Pq mdoc , man , roff
- The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
- .Xr roff 7
- request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
- .Xr mdoc 7
- or
- .Xr man 7
- macro.
- It may be mistyped or unsupported.
- The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
- .It Sy "skipping request outside macro"
- .Pq roff
- A
- .Ic shift
- or
- .Ic return
- request occurs outside any macro definition and has no effect.
- .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
- .Pq roff
- An input file attempted to run a shell command
- or to read or write an external file.
- Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
- .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
- .Pq mdoc , eqn
- An
- .Ic \&It
- macro occurs outside any
- .Ic \&Bl
- list, or an
- .Xr eqn 7
- .Ic above
- delimiter occurs outside any pile.
- It is discarded including its arguments.
- .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Ta
- macro occurs outside any
- .Ic \&Bl Fl column
- block.
- It is discarded including its arguments.
- .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
- .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
- Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
- that have previously been opened.
- An
- .Xr mdoc 7
- block closing macro, a
- .Xr man 7
- .Ic \&ME , \&RE
- or
- .Ic \&UE
- macro, an
- .Xr eqn 7
- right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
- .Xr roff 7
- conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
- The offending request or macro is discarded.
- .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
- .Pq man
- The
- .Ic \&RE
- macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
- .Ic \&RS
- blocks is open.
- The
- .Ic \&RE
- macro is discarded.
- .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
- .Pq mdoc , tbl
- Various
- .Xr mdoc 7
- macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
- A block that doesn't support bad nesting
- ends before all of its children are properly closed.
- The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
- .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
- .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
- At the end of the document, an explicit
- .Xr mdoc 7
- block, a
- .Xr man 7
- next-line scope or
- .Ic \&MT , \&RS
- or
- .Ic \&UR
- block, an equation, table, or
- .Xr roff 7
- conditional or ignore block is still open.
- The open block is closed implicitly.
- .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
- .Pq roff
- Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
- non-whitespace ASCII characters.
- Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
- cannot form part of a name.
- The first argument of an
- .Ic \&am ,
- .Ic \&as ,
- .Ic \&de ,
- .Ic \&ds ,
- .Ic \&nr ,
- or
- .Ic \&rr
- request, or any argument of an
- .Ic \&rm
- request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
- is terminated by an escape sequence.
- In the cases of
- .Ic \&as ,
- .Ic \&ds ,
- and
- .Ic \&nr ,
- the request has no effect at all.
- In the cases of
- .Ic \&am ,
- .Ic \&de ,
- .Ic \&rr ,
- and
- .Ic \&rm ,
- what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
- and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
- When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
- only the escape sequence is discarded.
- The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
- the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
- .It Sy "using macro argument outside macro"
- .Pq roff
- The escape sequence \e$ occurs outside any macro definition
- and expands to the empty string.
- .It Sy "argument number is not numeric"
- .Pq roff
- The argument of the escape sequence \e$ is not a digit;
- the escape sequence expands to the empty string.
- .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
- .Pq mdoc
- For security reasons, the
- .Ic \&Bd
- macro does not support the
- .Fl file
- argument.
- By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
- might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
- the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
- The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
- .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bd
- block macro does not have any arguments.
- The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
- whatever mode was active before the block.
- .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
- .Pq mdoc
- A
- .Ic \&Bl
- macro fails to specify the list type.
- .It Sy "argument is not numeric, using 1"
- .Pq roff
- The argument of a
- .Ic \&ce
- request is not a number.
- .It Sy "argument is not a character"
- .Pq roff
- The first argument of a
- .Ic char
- request is neither a single ASCII character
- nor a single character escape sequence.
- The request is ignored including all its arguments.
- .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
- .Pq mdoc
- The first call to
- .Ic \&Nm ,
- or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
- .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
- .Pq mdoc
- The
- .Ic \&Os
- macro is called without arguments, and the
- .Xr uname 3
- system call failed.
- As a workaround,
- .Nm
- can be compiled with
- .Sm off
- .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
- .Sm on
- .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
- .Pq mdoc
- An
- .Ic \&St
- macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
- .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
- .Pq roff , eqn
- An
- .Ic \&it
- request or an
- .Xr eqn 7
- .Ic \&size
- or
- .Ic \&gsize
- statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
- The invalid request or statement is ignored.
- .It Sy "excessive shift"
- .Pq roff
- The argument of a
- .Ic shift
- request is larger than the number of arguments of the macro that is
- currently being executed.
- All macro arguments are deleted and \en(.$ is set to zero.
- .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
- .Pq roff
- For security reasons,
- .Nm
- allows
- .Ic \&so
- file inclusion requests only with relative paths
- and only without ascending to any parent directory.
- By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
- might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
- the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
- .Nm
- only shows the path as it appears behind
- .Ic \&so .
- .It Sy ".so request failed"
- .Pq roff
- Servicing a
- .Ic \&so
- request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
- opened.
- .Nm
- only shows the path as it appears behind
- .Ic \&so .
- .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
- .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
- An
- .Xr mdoc 7
- .Ic \&Bt ,
- .Ic \&Ed ,
- .Ic \&Ef ,
- .Ic \&Ek ,
- .Ic \&El ,
- .Ic \&Lp ,
- .Ic \&Pp ,
- .Ic \&Re ,
- .Ic \&Rs ,
- or
- .Ic \&Ud
- macro, an
- .Ic \&It
- macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
- .Xr man 7
- .Ic \&LP ,
- .Ic \&P ,
- or
- .Ic \&PP
- macro, an
- .Xr eqn 7
- .Ic \&EQ
- or
- .Ic \&EN
- macro, or a
- .Xr roff 7
- .Ic \&br ,
- .Ic \&fi ,
- or
- .Ic \&nf
- request or
- .Sq \&..
- block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
- All arguments are ignored.
- .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
- .Pq mdoc , man , roff
- A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
- .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
- .It
- .Ic \&Fo ,
- .Ic \&MT ,
- .Ic \&PD ,
- .Ic \&RS ,
- .Ic \&UR ,
- .Ic \&ft ,
- or
- .Ic \&sp
- with more than one argument
- .It
- .Ic \&An
- with another argument after
- .Fl split
- or
- .Fl nosplit
- .It
- .Ic \&RE
- with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
- .It
- .Ic \&OP
- or a request of the
- .Ic \&de
- family with more than two arguments
- .It
- .Ic \&Dt
- with more than three arguments
- .It
- .Ic \&TH
- with more than five arguments
- .It
- .Ic \&Bd ,
- .Ic \&Bk ,
- or
- .Ic \&Bl
- with invalid arguments
- .El
- The excess arguments are ignored.
- .El
- .Ss Unsupported features
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "input too large"
- .Pq mdoc , man
- Currently,
- .Nm
- cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
- of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
- Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
- Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
- .It Sy "unsupported control character"
- .Pq roff
- An ASCII control character supported by other
- .Xr roff 7
- implementations but not by
- .Nm
- was found in an input file.
- It is replaced by a question mark.
- .It Sy "unsupported escape sequence"
- .Pq roff
- An input file contains an escape sequence supported by GNU troff
- or Heirloom troff but not by
- .Nm ,
- and it is likely that this will cause information loss
- or considerable misformatting.
- .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
- .Pq roff
- An input file contains a
- .Xr roff 7
- request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
- .Nm ,
- and it is likely that this will cause information loss
- or considerable misformatting.
- .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
- .Pq eqn , tbl
- The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
- Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
- .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
- .Pq tbl
- A table layout specification contains an
- .Sq Cm m
- modifier.
- The modifier is discarded.
- .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
- .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
- A table contains an invocation of an
- .Xr mdoc 7
- or
- .Xr man 7
- macro or of an undefined macro.
- The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
- as if they were a text line.
- .It Sy "skipping tbl in -Tman mode"
- .Pq mdoc , tbl
- An input file contains the
- .Ic \&TS
- macro.
- This message is only generated in
- .Fl T Cm man
- output mode, where
- .Xr tbl 7
- input is not supported.
- .It Sy "skipping eqn in -Tman mode"
- .Pq mdoc , eqn
- An input file contains the
- .Ic \&EQ
- macro.
- This message is only generated in
- .Fl T Cm man
- output mode, where
- .Xr eqn 7
- input is not supported.
- .El
- .Ss Bad command line arguments
- .Bl -ohang
- .It Sy "bad command line argument"
- The argument following one of the
- .Fl IKMmOTW
- command line options is invalid, or a
- .Ar file
- given as a command line argument cannot be opened.
- .It Sy "duplicate command line argument"
- The
- .Fl I
- command line option was specified twice.
- .It Sy "option has a superfluous value"
- An argument to the
- .Fl O
- option has a value but does not accept one.
- .It Sy "missing option value"
- An argument to the
- .Fl O
- option has no argument but requires one.
- .It Sy "bad option value"
- An argument to the
- .Fl O
- .Cm indent
- or
- .Cm width
- option has an invalid value.
- .It Sy "duplicate option value"
- The same
- .Fl O
- option is specified more than once.
- .It Sy "no such tag"
- The
- .Fl O Cm tag
- option was specified but the tag was not found in any of the displayed
- manual pages.
- .It Sy "\-Tmarkdown unsupported for man(7) input"
- .Pq man
- The
- .Fl T Cm markdown
- option was specified but an input file uses the
- .Xr man 7
- language.
- No output is produced for that input file.
- .El
- .Sh SEE ALSO
- .Xr apropos 1 ,
- .Xr man 1 ,
- .Xr eqn 7 ,
- .Xr man 7 ,
- .Xr mandoc_char 7 ,
- .Xr mdoc 7 ,
- .Xr roff 7 ,
- .Xr tbl 7
- .Sh HISTORY
- The
- .Nm
- utility first appeared in
- .Ox 4.8 .
- The option
- .Fl I
- appeared in
- .Ox 5.2 ,
- and
- .Fl aCcfhKklMSsw
- in
- .Ox 5.7 .
- .Sh AUTHORS
- .An -nosplit
- The
- .Nm
- utility was written by
- .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
- and is maintained by
- .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .